week 7...!

hey guys,

only one more weekend left before the end of term... now that's a depressing thought!... ppl say that oxbridge is mad because you have so much time in the hols... on the face of it though, it isn't such a great thing because the terms are crammed with work and then u don't see your uni mates for aaaages!

this week's not been too bad - our neuro supervision was cancelled, and we didnt have a pharm practical supervision, so only 3 supervisions! wed i had an indian music concert at selwyn - it was done in association with the CU hindu cultural society, and i was asked to play my indian drums (mridangam) - i'm just about the only mridangist in cam, so kinda in demand when it comes to concerts like this! the mridangam is basically used to accompany karnatic classical music, and is sort of the predecessor (did i spell that right?) of the tabla, which not many ppl know!

anyway, the concert went really well, had a good time. today's gonna b mad though - it's the india society annual ball - BIG event!! again i'm playing mridangam - i'm playing in a fusion band called 'diaspora' - the music is kinda cool - we used western lyrics and the odd beatles melody and then fuse it into asian 'raag' and 'tala' using our instruments to produce quite a cool sound - u should def hear some of it sometime!

also went to formal at downing on thurs night - we tend to do 'formal hall swaps' with medics from other colleges - we go to formal at theirs, and then they come to us (except we cunningly always play the away fixture first, as sometimes the return leg doesnt alway work out....). downing formal was really gd - one of the formals where it's purely candlelit (no other lights), so really romantic, though with the price that you can't actually see anything or anyone properly! the food was good, but as per usual, the veg option had far less for the money you paid (which was £9!)

yesterday night the robinson medics went to churchill formal; i didn't go because i thought i might have a rehearsal for india soc ball... turns out i didn't, but i still used the time to write my human reproduction essay (repro is our 4th subject, remember), so that's one thing out of the way for this weekend.

done my path essay too during the week, so the only thing left on my list of supervision work to do are some rock hard pharm practical questions (should be fun...) - i've left sunday to do most of those, as i'm sure it'll take me a good 4 hours to suss out some of the questions (though they're only meant to take you an hour in the exam)!

anyway, i've got to dash now - dress rehearsal is at 3, but i'm not coming back, so getting changed all in one go... i'll write another blog next week - until then - bye! K :)

2nd year hits in, week 6!

just when i thought things weren't too bad, the workload really piled on this week! we've now started doing supervisions for human reproduction (the 4th subject we do in addition to pathology, pharmacology and neurobiology), and following the 5 supervisions we had this week i'm starting to get really tired! it's not so much the effort of going to the supervisions, but it's the fact that they take so much time out of your week, mostly in doing the essays set by the supervisors! we've been set our first essay by our repro supervisor, as well as a set of multiple-choice questions, to do before our next supervision. on top of that, we've got our path essay due in 2 weeks time, and we also got set a pharm essay for this weekend too!! arg!

i spent most of last night (fri night spent working - tell me about it!) writing up my pharm essay... this morning i woke up and did the MCQs for repro - you'd think that multiple choice questions are easy, but you wouldn't be further from the truth - they come in different styles, sometimes circling the right answer, sometimes extended matching, but the *killer* ones - the multiple true/false ones. here you get given a topic for the question, followed by a list of statements. you've got to put true or false for each statement, which requires you to know that particular topic inside out! i spent easily around 2/3 hours today just looking up stuff from 3/4 textbooks, and the net, for just 20 or so MCQs!

tomorrow the plan is to start my path essay, but i've also got a footy match in the afternoon, followed by a rehearsal for the music concert on wed, and then a mayball committee meeting in the evening! i've got practically no time to go back and read the lectures that we've had, and this is one of the annoying things you'll come to learn at cam... because you're learning things at such a fast pace (and have a fair amount of supervision work set that uses up your weekend), you actually don't have that much time to re-read the lectures you've been to, (unless you need to revise the topic for an essay!), so invariably you spend the holidays playing catch up. to be honest it's not as bad as i just made it sound - it's definitely manageable, but the one thing i can say for sure is that you've got to be pretty organised to prioritise and sort out what you need to do when.

def important to destress though - spent this afternoon refereeing a women's footy match lol, which was good fun, but Robinson only had 8 players, so we unsurprisingly lost 7-0!! just came back and finished off those horrible repro mcqs - now i'm getting ready to go off to Emmanuel formal hall tonight, which should be good fun!

sorry this entry is pretty short - if i find more time i'll try and add to it during the week - but for now tata!

kief :)

i can't believe we've got 3 weeks left!

time flies when you're in cam - we're only 5 weeks into the term, but we're more than halfway there! so far so good... i think in a way i'm much more relaxed now than i was this time last year, partly because i'm not stressing out so much about work!

this week has been pretty uneventful, not a lot going on. friday was good though - every year for bonfire night there's a huge fireworks display on midsomer commons, followed by a big fair with loads of rides... downside is that practical all of cambridge turns up there, and it's a bit like a cattlemarket trying to get anywhere! unfortunately i missed the fireworks because i went out for a meal, and lost track of time! :(

workwise it's also been a surprisingly quiet week... we didnt get set an essay in neuro, and i only had my path essay to finish off, with some practical questions for pharm, so it was kinda manageable.

this week's going to be a different story though. we're starting supervisions for human reproduction (the 4th subject that we begin in two weeks time), and i've also got my pharm practical supervision this week as well, so all in all i've got 5 supervisions this week!

we've also got our termly medical society formal dinner on tuesday night, with an ex-Robinson medic as the speaker. thing is, formal starts at half 7, and i've got to go to 2 supervisions right before - i've got path from 5-6 and pharm from 6-7... this means i'll probably have to get dressed for formal at like half 4 (!!) and go to my supervisions dressed up in a suit hehe.

the other thing is that i've also got an indian music concert coming up at selwyn on 17th (i play a type of south indian drum called the mridangam), so i've got rehearsals for that coming up too!

anyway, i best go get a little bit of work done and relax a bit too before next week starts!! i'll write again next week.

kief :)