Swallowing a texbook is hard to do…

Listening to: “Pretty Vacant” – The Sex Pistols
Feeling: Relieved
Surfing: This blog!

It’s amazing what study can do.

No, really.

I studied so much last week. More than I’ve ever studied before in my life (though I’m sure I’ve said that line a few times before).

I was never a “study” person back in school. I was always the “cram-the-night-before” type. Teachers would always say “one day you’ll find out it doesn’t work”. Thankfully I never did have to find out the hard way, though I’m realising now that I should probably find myself a study routine.

Contrary to what my friends at school used to think I did not spend a lot of time locked in my room studying. I remember a junior student at school asking me for tips once and one of the things I told her worked for me was really trying hard to understand concepts during class time, instead of daydreaming and staring out the window.

Well that may have been relatively easy during the good old days, but more and more I think you begin to realise that in a lot of lectures, you’ll be sitting there thinking “gosh where is this going?” or “what is he talking about?” But you won’t be the only one.

I’m glad to say that I’ve had really good lecturers so far, although sometimes it’s been much easier learning out of the associated textbook. If and when you feel totally lost during a lecture, don’t worry. Don’t fret. Don’t panic. Lectures are only a tool. And only one form of tool. There are plenty of other resources out there for you. You have the course guide, your textbooks, fellow peers (many of whom also probably didn’t understand a word), you can email your lecturer directly, if you’re in college you might have tutors and more senior students living with you. And let’s not forget wikipedia. Especially for the medics, wikipedia will be your best friend (if it’s not already that is).

Ok so anyway, what I was saying was that I pretty much got into study mode as soon as I arrived back in Melbourne after Easter break because we had a test scheduled for this morning. I planned my study blocks so that I would cover a certain number of topics each day. Of course, sometimes things didn’t go according to plan, for example if I didn’t quite get to the end of a chapter and I really needed sleep, I would stop, sleep and catch up the next day.

I noticed that some of the other med students weren’t really doing any study, but that didn’t phase me, because I knew that I needed to work hard and it didn’t matter what other people were doing.

Well I’m glad I got started early because it meant I got everything done by Sunday lunch. During that week I pretty much swallowed An@tomedia (my textbook). Saturday was allocated to reading over all my lecture slides, and on Sunday I read all of the course guide synopses and did some final revision.

Once I had finished I felt so so so relieved! I hadn’t expected to finish that early. By this time though I could feel myself getting a little light-headed, so I decided to head out into the city and perhaps do a little shopping (which I did). I hadn’t yet been to DFO Spencer Street so I took the tram down to Bourke St, walked around Myer for a while, then trammed to DFO.

Later that night we had a College party, themed “Too Kool for Skool” where everyone put on their school uniforms partied, danced, drank and ate fairy bread.

It was an awesome night, and I’m glad I was able to go. I was, however, the only person representing the med crew, as all the others were cramming their way into the night (teeheehee). I guess if anything, it goes to show that with a little bit of time management, and self-perseverance, it still possible to lead a balanced life, something that has always been really important to me.

Edit:
It occurred to me about 10 minutes after posting this, that I failed to report on how the test actually went!
Well, to cut a long story short, it was great! Awesome test. Glad I studied though!