In Which Postgraduate Education Comes increasingly to Resemble Primary School

The amazing thing about doing Graduate Medicine is how much it's like Primary School. We all seem to be regressing to a strangely childlike state. Maybe it's because of the fact that we're largely in the same groups for most of our classes, just like in primary (or, ok high-) school. Instead of seeing that girl in your Social Psychology class but rarely other than then, you see the same people all the time. It's like you're back in class 6C, strangely close. Plus, our anatomy homework is colouring-in, which is kind of neat.

Also, it seems to be causing people to act as if we were small again. In lunch time breaks, people play frisbee on the oval, or sit in little circles, eating their lunches out of lunch boxes. Nerds go to the library and study (or, as it might be, write blog posts) in just the same way as we used to go and do tests on TheSpark.com. "How gay are you?" "What will you die of?" "What are the major risk factors in osteoporotic hip fractures?"

At first, shyness abounded, like that first day in a new school, or the first day of year 7, before we rapidly coagulated into little clumps and lumps: the people who went to the same junior school/ undergrad degree over *here*, the people who are delighted to note that they both totally love Hello Kitty over *there*, and those not so quickly absorbed wandering around with their mounting anxiety thinly veiled.

After a couple of months, there are friendly cliques. These lack the impermeability of those of early high school, reminding us of year 12, when we had the shared experience of a common room and a little notional maturity to allow communication between groups. But people sit in roughly the same place in classes, and organise themselves excursions and activities, like hiking or study days or drinking until they fall over, as their various skills dictate.

Perhaps the most obvious sign of all this strange regression, nicknames abound. I think it must be a decade since I last heard someone called something like "Smell-eanor" (all in friendliness, of course). Moreover, the nature of the course means that I've seen (and, indeed, touched) considerably more of my classmates shirtless in the last 2 months than in my entire undergrad degree.

The weird thing about this is that it's not just our interactions regressing, but our behaviour too: everyone seems to act like an exaggeration of their own type. The fidgety one. The quiet one. The loud one. The guy who insists on asking a question in every lecture. The class clown. The slightly odd girl who knits in class (not previously something I'd've listed as a major type). It's a strange thing to feel yourself doing this.

I keep catching myself doing things I've been glad to've stopped in the past. I catch myself showing off, or talking too loudly, or deliberately trying to look interesting. “What is that? Who does that? This is 15 year old behaviour," I tell myself. "Ok, maybe just the one crazy homemade garment."

Maybe I'm kidding myself: now I come to think about it, maybe I'm always like this, but I worked most of the time for so long that I've forgotten what I'll get up to when left unsupervised. I wonder if it's pathological that I always seem a little bit odd, slightly off-kilter. (I wonder how it's taken me this long into this oddly-toned blog post to notice that I'm sort of mimicing the style of the book I'm reading: that explains a lot). Does a normal person feel the need to keep asserting themself (as a "Self") like this? Now I come to ask this, the answer is obviously yes.

If we weren't all self obsessed, and determined to be seen as the unique and beautiful snowflake each and every one of us, to the same extent, is, you wouldn't get fashions. Or 80 slightly different shades of nail polish to ensure that we can express ourselves. Or "skins" for phones and iPods. Or "How well do you know Rachel Jones?" facebook quizzes (who cares? I do not feel the need to define myself by the quality of knowledge I have about 230 of my acquaintances, and even if I did, I do not feel that knowing what your "favourite childhood colour", "most-luvved drink" or "**current** pet" is indicative of the quality of our friendship. (Also, what's with this trick question thing? "Current" pet? Don't let's even begin to dissect the layers of demandingness there)).

Maybe this whole regression thing is just a sort of last hurrah. We all know, we keep being reminded, that soon we will be incredibly responsible grownups, needing to look professional every day, having to take responsibility, working odd hours with no breaks. Perhaps the natural reaction to that is to want to dye your hair purple for the sheer joy of it, or go to Cargo Bar, or play at lunchtime. Still, it's strange to me that so many people are married, and have grown-up jobs, and it's strange and lovely that there are cakes on birthdays, and frisbee at lunchtime. Even if the guy who brought the frisbee is actually someone's Dad.

PS: I accidentally managed to delete the comments on this blog. Sorry mysterious commenters, I do value you, honest!

In Which a Blog is Prodigally Returned-to, and a Brief Update leads to Not Particularly Interesting Self-Affirmation.

So, someone the other day asked me why I never seem to post on my blog anymore. The answer to this is threefold: firstly, I was posting largely as procrastination, before, and I've finished my thesis, so now I don't spend hours in front of my computer pondering absently. Secondly, I do not, at present, have the internet at home. Thirdly, to be honest, on account of the first point, I'd almost forgotten that I had a blog at all.

Anyway, I'm on it now. But as usual, it's taken me so long to hack into my own account (which is to say, remember both the login name AND password) that I've completely forgotten what I was going to post about. As such, I will simply update my blog in terms of "here's what's changed since last time" and hope that I remember while I do that.

Last time I posted anything I had just handed in my thesis, just started going out with a Young Man,and just had an interview to see if I would get into Medicine. The answers to the questions implicit in these events are, in reverse order, Yes, No, and Maybe. Which is to say: I got into Medicine, Simon and I broke up, and I got Honours, but not quite such impressive marks as I'd've liked.

The experienced reader, at this point, thinks unsurprised thoughts about this last point. "Of course you didn't go all that well, you idiot. You wrote the same number of words in blog posts in the two months before you handed in your thesis as you wrote in your Entire Thesis! Perhaps a little undivided attention whould have been a good idea, hmmm?" Well, you're right, but I think it's unkind of you to mention it.

Anyway, there's a thing: Undivided Attention. I have totally lost the ability to ever have that. Reading old posts, with all their parentheitical distractions, I almost doubt whether I was ever much good at focusing, but I'm certainly shot now. In lectures, I knit. In front of the TV I paint and unpaint my nails, or sew, or something. In a tutorial, the other day, I took it into my head to mend a shirt in class.

Who the hell could possibly think that was a good idea? Does that, one fears one's tutor inevitably asks himself, really show appropriate Respect for The Problem Based Learning Process? I really was listening and stuff, honest, it's just that I'm so fidgety that it seems that I ought to at least fidget constructively. It's weird. Anyway. I'm sure it will be fine, and even if I flunk out of medicine on account of it (deeply unlikely? Computer says yes!) at least I can open some kind of awesome cafe where I bake cupcakes and suchlike, and then while people drink their tea, I sew the buttons back on their mending and so on.

Hey wow, best idea ever? Don't try to tell me there wouldn't be a market for that. It would be like being a 1950s housewife for a job, but without all the weird sexual repression. I could probably wear 1950s dresses the whole time for effect. That would be Pretty Sweet, quite frankly.

In the meanwhile, though, I think I'll keep Doctorin' as Plan A, because although it was all a bit much at first, it's pretty cool now. The lectures still sort of seem to be either much too complex and involved (these are the specific protein weights for all the genes involved in cancer - what? Seriously? You don't expect me to remember any of this, do you?) or repetitive in explaining pretty simple things (it took an hour yesterday for them to tell us - again- that drug use was a complex issue, and it was important not to discriminate against drug-using patients), it seems to be kind of coming together a bit.

Also, the other day, for no very convincingly understandable reason, instead of a 2 hour hospital clinic tutorial on Orthopaedic examination, we (2 students)were sent to stand in theatre while someone had their hip operation. This was unexpectedly rewarding, if not particularly educational. We couldn't really see what was actually happening (or I couldn't; maybe Tall Cam could see over the shoulders), but it was cool to see the setup and there were blood splashes on the plastic curtain, and smoke which I hadn't expected but which was not as distressing as I might've expected if it had occurred to me to expect it. Also, I managed to solve the problem of being completely supernumerary by holding the (awake but spinal-blocked) patient's hand and saying "everything's ok" in a clear, confident voice every time he looked terrified.

I'm given to understand that this sort of thing is awfully good for people, just as you might more or less expect, so leaving aside that the sedatives will have given him amnesia and he won't remember it, I feel like I did a Good Thing.

This seems reassuring. It's nice to have one's secret hopes that one would remember to be Thoughtful in a minor crisis confirmed.

Man, boring reading, much? I promise that my next blog post will contain 100% more tigers, dinosaurs and UFOs fighting each other with Swords. I cannot promise that the sentences would be shorter, but if this is really bothering you, read Cake Wrecks instead.