Celebrating the small wins…

I’ve experienced several ups and downs over the last few days. I kept thinking about him. But the good thing is that I am now able to dismiss the thoughts quite quickly, but this weekend the thoughts and memories were popping up more and more frequently.

It doesn’t help that his face keep catching me by surprise when I’m on my phone, thanks to the iPhone camera roll features. But I don’t have the heart to delete everything yet.

Yesterday I was fed up of the increasing frequency of the thoughts. So I decided to give myself the time to actually go through a couple of our photos of the good times. I revisited photos of our holiday, our engagement, times with friends and just funny photos from when we were chilling. I actually had the strength to delete quite a few photos. Not everything, but I think this is going to be a step-by-step thing. I don’t know if I will ever have the heart to delete everything, but for now I am deleting a couple every now and then.

Today I realised he only popped into my head once in the morning and then once earlier this evening. Then obviously now as I am writing this. I feel like going through some of the photos yesterday helped me?! Either way, when I realised that he hadn’t popped up in my head a fraction of the amount of times he has been in the recent past, I felt a sense of relief. Is this me… growing? Accepting? Whatever it is, I am SO here for it. I just hope it lasts!

I even told my best friend yesterday, that I feel like I have been genuinely happy recently. Like aside from the times when the thoughts of him come and piss me off that is. Genuine happiness feels like something so unusual. I feel like I have been forced to fake my happiness maybe 70% of the time over the last few months. But that percentage is definitely decreasing. Doing lots of reflecting and surrounding myself with friends and doing things I wasn’t very open to before (mainly going out frequently and saying yes to motives haha) has helped. A lot. But in the process I’ve discovered a whole new side of me that I haven’t seen before.

It initially worried me to think that I am discovering all these new things about me as I’m getting into my late 20s. I am starting to appreciate the smaller things in life, and most of all being less critical of myself and learning to love myself. But definitely better late than never. Did I almost marry someone without actually discovering who I am and not knowing how to love myself?! That sh*t scares me. Thank god for the universe eh?!

Med school is also starting to get more and more real. Starting to approach the end of our first placement, all of our foundation job application stuff starts from today and the biggest surprise today was getting a glimpse of my future GMC number! Fingers crossed, with hard work, good things are on the way.

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I failed my 4th year med school exams…

I failed my 4th year exams

Yes. It happened.

As if coming to terms with my mental health struggles and my break up wasn’t enough, life decided to throw more lemons at me by adding this extra stress. 

It had not been long since the finalisation of the break up either. Results day itself this year was already going to be hard enough as my ex and I had a running tradition of spending the day with each other on every results day we both had since 2015. So not only was I alone for it for the first time in years, but I also found out I had failed. 

Safe to say, I was a mess. I had no idea how I was going to mentally cope with not only dealing with a breakup, not talking to my best friend but now also to find the strength to actually resit my exams. I had only failed by FOUR marks in one paper and THREE in the other. The pass mark was also ridiculously high – like 60 or 61%. Almost 1/3 of my year had also failed, so I felt less alone in this whole process. Nevertheless, it was utterly sh*t. I miss biomed pass marks of 40% lol

Retakes were scheduled for just under three weeks time. I managed to put my head down during the first maybe two or three days, but then I was struggling. I was an emotional wreck, I went through periods of sadness and then suddenly anger and frustration. I was barely eating still, so my energy levels were just not great. My head was not in the right space to resit these exams. But I knew I had to get through this. Because this is about me, for my future, and I was not prepared to let someone else get in the way of my second chance. Especially not someone from my past who was no longer in my present life. Urgh. Men.

I really struggled. My family were absolutely great and did what they could. But sometimes nothing would help. But eventually I started to go back to the gym as I realised I needed some kind of routine. Before I knew it, I was going to the gym every other day throughout the revision period and it REALLY helped me – mentally, physically and emotionally. I felt a sense of relief when I would walk into the gym, and such satisfaction when I’d walk out. I started eating better. My sister was such a babe and would make me all sorts of healthy smoothies for me to drink after my workouts! they tasted better than they looked xD

One day, I got chatting with one of the personal trainers and I swear I was meant to meet her. Turns out she had gone through a lot of similar things in her past and gave me so much hope. She ended up giving me a free PT session and through her I started getting into weight training and fell even more in love with working out. She would check in on me whenever she’d see me at the gym and it honestly was such a blessing in disguise to meet her. 

My mood would have its ups and downs, but regular gym sessions definitely helped. Days when I would be extra frustrated I’d sit on the bikes and cycle 10k. If I had a lot of anger, I’d throw in a couple of extra reps with weights. I found an outlet and I was so bloody pleased. Revision was sticky during the middle of the three weeks because I would see DUMB things through social media that would upset me lol. But yeah ultimately, the revision period was really difficult and I can honestly say the most productive revision was probably done maybe a few days before the exam itself. But better than nothing right? I had to prioritise ME and make sure I was well before doing anything. 

Exams came, sat them, then got results a week and a bit later. Was SO relieved to find out that I had passed and was able to progress into final year!! My family and friends would make it a habit to remind me that I achieved this despite all the difficult things I was going through. And that ladies and gentleman, is all the motivation I need to prove to myself that I GOT THIS.

I am still healing and have a long road ahead of me. But I already know I’m in a MUCH better place than I was around 3 months ago. I’ve admittedly struggled to schedule gym in with placement life but I’m going to start this week as I finally feel like I’m getting into the swing of things. Slowly but surely, progress is being made. And I’m here for it!

Anyway again, why share this? We are all prone to seeing success stories and positive stuff on social media. When the reality is, even these people experience hardships and failures in their lives but may simply decide not to talk about them. Med school is tough. Any degree is tough!! It is NORMAL to fail exams, to retake exams and even retaking the year is very normal. But people don’t talk about it enough. By sharing my experience, again I hope that I help someone out there feel less alone about failing exams and to remind them that failure is still a part of success. We have retakes for a reason – because failing is normal. It’s just a second chance to have another shot. But it is SO important to also listen to our physical and mental health – if we can’t study, it’s okay. It’s miles better to take time off completely and come back to tackle revision when you’re feeling more refreshed. 

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Overly Optimistic?

I’ve come to realise that my last two posts about getting into medicine and my experiences from working in the NHS have been extremely positive. So positive, that it may make me come across as a little bit naive with regards to the nature of pursuing a medical career…?

I can assure everyone (and myself) that I fully understand what life is going to be like once I go back to uni. I know that the next five years of my life are going to be far from easy and will test me to the max. I am fully aware that there are going to be times when I will question my career choice and who knows, I could struggle to keep on top of everything and find myself questioning whether it’s even worth it.

This is why I am glad I didn’t apply and get in at 18. I would have been too immature to understand things the way I do now, and the lack of general life experience would’ve put a strain on the way I handle situations and myself. For example, I feel like I only truly figured out how to tackle revision when I got to the end of second year of my undergrad degree. I feel like I crawled out of my shell properly after starting work in theatres, after having to deal with all sorts of situations.

Have I been put off? Yes, there have been times where I have found myself wondering whether I am making the right decision with the sort of career I seem to be so passionate about getting into. When the Junior Doctor contract issues came to light, I found myself following the stories very closely. I felt so involved and held strong views about what was being imposed on doctors. It was sad to see such low morale amongst a group of professionals who work incredibly hard for the benefit of others.

It was quite a hard time to be 110% sure about wanting to go to med school during this period. I have written a few posts during those times when my thoughts were all over the place (Peaks and Troughs). I started to wonder whether I should walk away whilst I can, and pursue my back up option. But there was always something that kept pulling me back to wanting to not give up but to just fulfil this dream. I am a strong believer of not living with regrets, and I knew if I didn’t apply to med school purely because I let something political influence my decision, I would always regret it.

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The above had been written just before I started med school.

I am now coming to the end of my first semester, and it has already been a bit of a rollercoaster in terms of work and emotions.

Everything I wrote about anticipating before I had even started med school? Yeah… I’ve already experienced it.

Stay tuned for my next post, where I’ll be giving an overview of how my first semester went 🙂

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Three months later…

Hello! I know I’ve been absent for over three months now, but I guess that’s what med school does to you? 😛

I have hopes of restarting this blog properly once I’ve properly got that whole time management thing figured out!

This blog initially started off with stories about growing up as a brown girl in the western world whilst having to deal with drama that comes with being Asian. It then slowly touched upon some politics/world affairs and then centred around working life and med school applications. Now it’s probably going to be a lot about med school related stories and rants and all sorts of glorious things somehow connecting back to medicine.

I do miss writing about the original brown girl related posts so I will try and throw some in when I get the chance, because well, drama never ends in the Asian community 😛

I have a post that links in with the last two posts regarding med school/NHS which has been sitting in my drafts for over three months, so my next post will take a step back to address those topics. Purely because I think it was an interesting post and it feels like a shame to let it go to waste!

Signing off this post hoping that I will actually post again within the next few days and not in a few months 😛

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