The Exams : A Review

Right, for my own record and for your curiosity, here's how the questions panned out today.

In the morning, we had a 2 hour long essay paper which involved 3 questions, which were further split into subsections. The first was on the menstrual cycle and the associated hormones, which I dealt with well, apart from the later sections in which everybody apparently did badly. I'd like to think I got at least a D overall here.

The second subject was renal failure. I answered a small sub question confidently enough, but the bulk of the marks were lost to nervous rambling about things which may or may not have been relevant. Given a day to think through the answers, I would've been okay, but the time restraints were extremely bad.

The final question was the compulsory bastard, this year on MRSA. It was safe to say that my classmates knew nothing about his from the books, and everything we wrote down was either common sense, or dug out from a distant, faded and dusty memory room of A Levels and first year lectures.

On one hand, I'd like to think that the combined average of poor performance of my peers and my own haphazard effort will combine to form a D grade, but wishful thinking is not unknown to me. An E is less unlikely than partially expected.

This leads me to my hopeful saviour, the afternoon short-answer paper. God knows I'm better when the answer is only one word, and if you don't know it, it costs you one mark at the most. There were many easy questions, for example the stuff on thyroid was just like taking candy from a baby, but the harder questions were bloody awful. Presented with a photo of a slice of brain, we had to define the abnormalities and name the area involved. To me, to most of us, it just looked like...brain. Luckily though, for the most part, it was a solid exam and I expect to get no worse than a C for it.
Which begs the final and most important question....is the solidity of the afternoon paper going to make up for the flimsiness of the morning paper? Only time will tell.