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My resit hell


Sabrina

We chart the ups and downs of Sabrina as she takes time out from medical school.
Entry: 10

As life in general has become more stressful and her medication has been increased, Sabrina has to decide if a life in medicine is actually what she wants.

One of the benefits and drawbacks of life is that you never know what it's going to throw at you. Sometimes, you'll be down a long time before you get up again. Unfortunately, due to some 'technical problems' I have had a lot of downtime, and my future appears to be quite uncertain, regarding medicine anyway. I crashed and burned in a rather spectacular fashion, had to re-sit (the prognosis doesn't look good) and my medication for depression were increased.

This all happened in a very short space of time and it will be more confusing if I try and determine where and when this all started, so I'll break it down into periods over the last few months.

June

If I pass my resits, then I have the decision about whether I should carry on with my course given that I still have a lot of work to do getting over the depression and anxiety which has come back. If I don't pass, then obviously, I can't continue with the course, and will have to find other things to do with my life.

My medical school has been nothing but supportive, and even if I fail the resits, I still have an opportunity to push my marks up with an oral exam. A couple of my friends are in the same situation as me, and they've told me that after this year, they've decided to give medicine the elbow. Can't say I blame them. When you're practically married to a degree course and have come up against yet another hurdle, you no longer see it as giving up; it's just getting your life back.

I'm still undecided. I could either do something completely unrelated to medicine and get on with my life. Or, I can do what I normally do, and be as stubborn as a mule and keep fighting until I get back on the course. If I'd failed because I was lazy, or had poor academic results all year, then I'd just put the white flag up straight away. However, that wasn't the case, and as the dean of my medical school told me, this just wasn't the right time.

I won't know until I find out the results, so speculating may not actually be such a good idea until things are clearer, but sitting twiddling my thumbs wasn't for me either, the impatient bunny that I am.

"When you're practically married to a degree course and have come up against yet another hurdle, you no longer see it as giving up; it's just getting your life back."

Early July

Well, I failed my resits. I had suspected this, but it is still disappointing to see it. I have one last-ditch attempt to turn it all around with a viva (oral exam) in front of three or four other doctors. At the moment, I want to pack it all in and do something completely different.

I had the chance to go to Vienna for a few days to relax, and it put a lot of things into perspective for me. Namely that, I don't need my identity to be defined by what I do for a living. It gave me the chance to come to peace with many things, and realise that if I fail at medicine, I can do well in another field.

Late July - early morning

I had my viva today. Most of the other students there had dressed up in suits. After a horrible flight back from Austria, I stuck out like a sore thumb in a halter-neck top, jeans, and flip flops. I cried solidly outside the waiting room, and I cried during my entire viva. The poor doctors in the room, I bet they didn't know what to do with themselves. Somehow, I managed to answer most of the questions correctly, but it really depends on whether my overall mark was borderline enough for this to make a difference.

On the same day - mid-afternoon:

In between making fresh pasta and checking emails, I got my results. I passed.

It was an enormous shock to me, I was too stunned for words. I had to think a lot about whether I should carry on with medicine given that my medication has had to be increased, but I got this far, and I did a lot of fighting to get to this point. I have a long summer to get on with, and I intend to enjoy it as much as I can.


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