It has all begun again...

Well, London (last weekend of August) was awesome. Went over for the World Rowing Championships to cheer on some friends, and it was fantastic. A lot of Irish people there cheering for the crews, and during the lightweight men's 4- race (with the Irish being up for the gold medal), the buzz was electrifying...it was so exciting! They ended up with the bronze, which is a good result coming into Olympic years. And my friend in the lightweight women's double won the B final and was so cute afterwards, just beaming. Lot of late messy nights, took me like a week to recover!

So then in the beginning of September I started my last official rotation of my med school career - General Practice (same as Family Medicine). It's like a merge between medicine and psychiatry. They do more "medical" stuff but are into all the touchy feely social and emotional stuff too, you don't know whether to be happy it's a more relaxed version of practicing or whether to gag with the corniness and groan at lectures about common-sense crap. We were placed for two weeks in an "inner" Dublin ring and one week in an "outer" ring. My inner was Leixlip (1 hour from Dublin) and my outer was in Kilmuckridge, Wexford (about 2 hours from Dublin). 3 weeks observing was quite enough, I found it very boring. The first clinic treated those who were on methadone, so I just sat watching paperwork being signed. The second clinic was quiet because apparently business was taken away by the National Ploughing Championships (I kid you not). I didn't see anything terribly interesting...but I definitely heard some weird stuff...what goes on in the country....geez.... Anyway, I would definitely Not do GP outright...it would be something I would retire to. At least no ward rounds.

At least this rotation is quite relaxed with a lot of time (not that I have been using it wisely), which is very helpful coming up to my first set of final exams. Irish universities are different in that your grades in previous years don't really count towards your final marks that go towards your graduation mark. That's why final year exams are so pressurized...and it's gotten to us from the first day. We now have 4 weeks to go to the day, 4 weeks to learn all of pediatrics (eeps! it's like all of medicine but for small people) and hopefully get in Obs and Gyne along the way. There are two parts to the exams...a written paper and a clinical one where you're assigned a long and short case. You could be given anything under the sun and asked even more. Scary stuff!

So time to hermit! At least I'm living in a single room on campus which is great for hermitting!