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If ever I have grabbed life by the balls, it's been in the last 10 weeks. I'm so loving medical school, so loving all the things I'm doing, Newcastle is far exceeding expectations (and is totally great), I have wonderful friends and great housemates and I am just so damn exhausted. All. The. Time.

Every opportunity which has presented itself to me I've grabbed with both hands. Global health club committee member? Check. AMSA advisory committee? Check. Pre-clinical surgery experience? ...

I've never really been one to be massively 'affected' by things. Earthquake hit at home, dealt with it. First dissection, dealt with it. Relationships ending, dealt with it.
But today in the dissection room I saw something that hit me. Hard. I don't even really know why.
It was a face. Just a face. A prosected human face.
And it looked almost peaceful, like someone sleeping (minus the skin, of course). And it reminded me of people I loved, and I almost imagined it would wake ...

Because it got to hard to shuffle the excessive multitude of early impressions into any semblance of order, and come out with a fair deck - though I may try it later, when I have more perspective or more time - instead of that,then this is what I have found, so far, and often been surprised by.

Not always, of course, or not really. One should know oneself well enough to (even from the heights of optimism) predict well enough what will happen, but in the end, some things are more surprising ...

The point of this post is simply to allow me to have a breath of fresh air, more than anything.
I've been spending so much time sitting in 'hypothetical' interviews with the mirror, researching ethics, treatment, anatomy and other meddy-stuff that I've somewhat lost touch with the present. I think I have to take 3 steps back and remember that I haven't actually been accepted into medicine, nor have I received an interview offer and I haven't exactly scored an adequate score in the UMAT either. ...

Firstly, I have to apologise that I haven't blogged in months. I have been swept up in the excitement and busy nature of university and living at college.

I've completed my first term of medicine at UNSW and, so far, it's been fairly laid back. But that's the nature of Foundations so I have to get used to the fact that from here on in, it is going to get a LOT harder. First term is designed to guide us into the course gently and, as a result, our end of course exam doesn't count towards ...