Of Law and Medicine

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Its been quite a while since my last update so in the spirit of the New Year, here goes with an update!

Work continues apace, and is getting busier. While this makes the days go faster, I'm hoping it doesn't stop me from playing hockey.

Before christmas life was crammed with meeting distant friends, parties and christmas meals with various friends, colleagues and family. It was all jolly cheery although hard work!
Christmas came and was lovely too, I was back home which was nice, it was good to be pampered a bit by the parental unit.

After christmas I went skiing with a group of friends which was utterly amazing. Probably one of my top holidays of all time, the skiing was great (I hadn't forgotten how to ski), the weather was fantastic as we had blue skys for all but one of the days we were out there, and the night life and Apres Ski was good too.
New Year was especially good - a big party outdoors, snow, champagne, good music and fireworks.
I was a little bit sad to be coming back

Application wise, I've had a rejection from HYMS which puts me at a total of 1 interview, 1 rejection and still waiting to hear from both the Southampton 4 and 5 year courses. I figure a 50% success rate still isn't that bad. Still currently hoping that I hear from soton before I trek out to UEA, I'm pretty much decided that I'd like to/rather go to soton.

With the end of the christmas holidays, hockey training starts anew, training twice a week on week nights and then matches most saturdays and sundays. Its hard work, but so much fun. I've got a good group of friends who I play with and we all have a lot of laughts. Its nice that I can go to work, but then come home and be part of a big social group again like at uni.

Anyway, I'm still tired from skiing and I have work tomorrow so this update will have to stop here. Watch this space for soton updates.

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Work is currently exciting, I've had to do various bits of research which has been funny. Esentially I'm paid to read up on something medical that I might well have read anyway if i'd stumbled upon it while at home!
Its really enjoyable - today I read about osteo-chondral fractures of the talus! Tomorrow vaginal taping!
I've also had to field calls from punters which is scary but fun!

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Time for quite a long update from me - well as much as I can type on my phone on the way home from London!
its been a few weeks since my interview at Uea, so we'll start with that...
The journey there was a bit of a mission, 5 hours of trains and tube each way, in my mind i see this as one on the main disadvantages, its just such a long way from most of my friends and home, its also a pain because there is no direct line so you cant just sleep etc because you end up having to keep changing trains!

When I got to Norwich the town itself was lovely, much nicer than some and certainly not an unpleasant place. i know from various family holidays the countryside is quite nice! A bus ride got me to the uni which oddly seems laid out down each side of a long road, very linear! i found the medical school building with no problem and signed in for my interview - an OSCE style thing with 7 questions, 7 interviewers split between 7 rooms.

PROS
if you mess up a question its ok, its only 1/7 of your "score"
if you don't get a rapport going with your interviewer its also not the end of the world.

CONS
you don't get much time to answer each question, while you can get most of your answer out the detailed bits that i imagine get you extra credit sometimes get crammed in at the end.
you also don't get a chance to build up a rapport going with an interview who you click with.

over all, while it is a slightly odd way of being interviewed its probably an advantage and will certainly help to ensure a level playing field between candidates.

My interview itself went quite well, i could answer all the questions, although felt like i floundered slightly when asked to explain in detail about PBL, eep! generally though it went well and i hopped on the train after a tour by someone (could this be claire tryers of NMM?!) to await the result.

Last week I was on tour with the team I play for, which was great fun (this sounds vague but i dont want to "out" myself!) literally 5 mins before we pull into a hotel half way through the tour i think, oo I'lll check my emails, and lordy be there was a UCAS track update sitting there! After a bit of shaking and thinking I finally logged into track over my phones rather slow net connection to discover an unconditional offer from UEA!
This is obviously awesome news and there were drinks all round and plenty of back slapping!
I'm not sure that its really sunk in yet, i catch myself thinking about it and just smiling to myself! eeeeeppp!

I am of course still waiting to hear from Southampton bm4 and bm5, they seem to be taking an age - as happens every year! I guess its the price you pay for applying somewhere with minimal interviews. If i had a choice between uea and soton it would be pretty damn tricky. i like soton uni more than uea but have a sneaking suspicion that I'lll learn better on uea's course. My girlfriend is also a lot closer to soton! dilemma!
I'll say here what I said to her, as i only currently have an offer for uea, its not worth worrying about it until there's something to worry about, ie i have a soton offer too. although if i don't get one there's always the choice between accepting Uea or chancing it and dropping out to reapply next year with the hope of getting soton. although again, no sense thinking about that until i know soton have rejected me for both courses.

Work wise I moved seats today to the banking department so have had a whale of a time there today as you might imagine, though i suspect the time i leave in the evenings will get even later! ahh well, a door has been opened at the end of the tunnel!

The waiting for soton continues...

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Let it never be said that medical schools lack a sense of timing, after my last post on Monday, i received a rejection through for soton Bm5 yesterday evening. A bit sad, but not as down as i thought i would be. i guess i rationalise by saying to myself that i just hope the admissions tutors chat to each other before making offers and so have decided to offer me the 4 yeah course. im sure they do - positive mental attitude its what its all about (that or just delusions of grandeur)
in other news i am really quite excited about Uea, if i go there, while i'll be sad to lose friends and the familiarity of where i am now, it will be a change and a chance to meet new people and make new friends!

The waiting continues!

ps. for anybody is wondering about my poor spelling/grammar, its because im typing these entries on my nifty phone, a google G1 which i love. its like the iphone but better because it displays all the txt messages to and from one person together like an msn conversation, it also automatically syncs with my google calendar and emails - win! its just missing a spell checker in the browser!

Until next time!

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Another blog from my phone I'm afraid, i have been so busy with work it feels like i get home from work and only have time to reply to one email before i need to go to bed!

i figured I'd always have to write this blog, but hasn't given it too much though until Tuesday, when i wrote about a sentence and had to go to work. so take two via phone!
this blog could have potentially taken two forms, either a jubilant happy blog, probably brief saying i'd got an offer and was just about to go out! or a slightly sad post-rejection blog.

I did get rejected from both the soton bm5, and the bm4 (on monday). but im going to do my best to sound positive and not like i'm gutted

The bm5 rejection wasn't a huge shock, i'd always thought my chances, if anywhere, lay with the bm4 so no biggie.
on Monday after a lovely day at work, i managed to get out at 5:15ish, the first time since I started this new seat! the sun was blue the sky was shining (heh!) i checked my emails by phone and saw i had one about my track status. adrenalin kicked in. My heart was in my mouth and i could hear my pulse racing in my ears. it seemed like an eternity to get past each slow Track login page but I finally got there. Unsuccessful.

Monday night was a crap night, my house mates bought me cake which was nice, i made a chocolate pie (recipe to follow) and sat and thought.

Obviously I was gutted to have been rejected,but I wasn't quite sure why.
academically, i don't have a huge preference for one course over another.
on reflection, i should be quite happy about UEA. it is, after all, an offer to read medicine, which is what I want to do.
so why was i so miffed that soton rejected me? I think it comes down to this last year, I've settled in my house, ive settled down sports team-wise and i have a great group of friends. I'm not a person who finds sudden unexpected change easy to deal with. I suspect that i just subconsciously dont want to have to move or change too much in my life, which is currently quite enjoyable!

By Wednesday a new perspective had crept into my thinking. medicine is what I want to do, and being a non-science grad (law duh!) , with a C in Chemistry As (granted I aced an A in A2 biology) I'm also probably very lucky to have got an offer after 1 years applications and only having sat the UKCAT.
My sister, who got aAB inc bio and chem ranted at me to accept!
after some thought I saw her point and accepted.

So there we have it. current lawyer, future doctor. UEA 2010 entrant. The story continues

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Definitely time for an update here, I've even dropped off the first page - the first time since I started blogging over a year ago.

So, what's new since March?!

Work continues apace, although I'm not particularly enjoying it at the moment. I'm in the Corporate department of my firm which, as you might imagine, is fairly intense work. We've had a string of large deals go through (one company buying another essentially) and I've been busy working on them. Its not an area I'm particularly enamoured with which is probably making things harder.

As anybody who reads regularly will know, I'm a first year trainee, I start my second year in September. This means that the current second years have only two months to go before they qualify. Its tough seeing them getting ready to move on, applying for jobs, going for interviews and the like, knowing both that I know where I'm going next year, and that I still have another year to wait. I just wish I could be starting in September - if I didn't have to save and work to pay back various debts I would have applied to start then.
As you can imagine, all this isn't helped by the above fact - that I'm not enjoying my current department.

Still, current plan, take lots of holiday, dont work too hard and I've started listening to medical lectures again online (writing notes too!) with renewed enthusiasm. I figure I'll beat this department by getting interested in other things.

My usual sports have stopped for the summer, mainly because the university teams I play for have all stopped for the summer holidays. It kinda sucks but hey ho. When they stopped I said to myself that I'd take up swimming or something on the nights I previously would train. However this seems to have failed - tonight I'm typing this as I watch the Murray v Wawrinka match. Murray currently 2 sets to 1 up! Cooking dinner tonight has taken a back seat, as has the lecture I planned to do once the Tennis finished.

I've been double checking all the medicine loans etc that I may or may not be entitled to depending on the mood/IQ of the Student Loans Company Official when they receive my application.
Because I've lived away from home on loans/salary for the three years since uni I should be classed as an independent which means I'll get the full "student loan" for living costs.
However because its a second degree I wont get any tuition fee loan - this means as a baseline I'm going to need to find around £3300 per year for the first four years, depending on fee increases. I may have to apply to the bank of mum and dad, although hope to save atleast some of that over the next year and a bit.

So what else is new, swine flu. Topical at least as today saw both the UK's 2nd and 3rd death from it along with reports of some Tamiflu resistant strains. It hasn't affected me really, although the text messages I get from the hospital where I'm signed up as a bank HCA seem to be getting more frequent. Not hugely worried to be honest however, its likely to be mild (atleast at the moment) and I think its probably better to get some sort of immunity now, rather than to catch a more serious mutation later, when the NHS is more stressed and antivirals are in shorter supply.

Anyway, Murray now 2 -1 but isn't doing so well in this last set, and I have other bits to do while I watch is going to leave it here. As I type this, Wawrinka has just taken the 4th set! Argh!

Until next time!

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Hello everybody!

Its been such a long time that I've even dropped off the first page!!

So, what's going on in my world?!
Well the summer is well and truly over, so let's start with that! My summer was good. It was the first time in my life that I haven't had a school or uni summer holiday to look forward to, so its was a shame in that respect. That said, the work was ok and slightly more relaxed due to the holidays most of our clients are on!

My summer ended with a fantastic family holiday to ireland! We toured around and did lots of walking, cycling etc. We got the ferry over and spent some time slowly working our way up to dublin which was ace!
Sport wise ****sport has been mysteriously quiet due to the uni holidays. However thankfully on my return from ireland all the students are back so my usual crazy training regime has started again! This "year" I've also taken up umpiring, so if I'm not playing I end up umpiring! Those in the know will know what TITS is, I played, did fancy dress, umpired and loved it! Bring on sheffield NAMS! ( to those of you not in the know, sorry! I'm keeping the exact sport secret to ensure my anonymity - some time next year I will explain more!)

On this topic, if you're a regular reader (do I have regular readers?! When do I qualify for them?) You'll know I'm going to UEA - however, UEA medical school doesn't actually have a ****sport team! I've been facebooking with some UEA medics about sorting out the starting of a club which is quite exciting! I'm hoping I can push people in the right direction and help out with the organisation this year, and then next year when I start it'll all be running happily! I had a vague vision of having a club captain tshirt before I even started but I very much doubt that will happen - its not sorted yet and there would have to be elections and stuff!!
I can dream right?

In other medical news I've started worrying about money for next year! I am saving as much as I can this year, but sadly a lot of this is going towards paying my parents back for a loan they gave me while I was doing my legal practice course. This is slightly demoralising as I save up £3000 and then have to pay it out to them leaving my total med school savings at 0 - boo! I've been looking at funding for things (I had previously but I'm now in the process of double checking!) which is always depressing. The student loan calculator gives one figure, another website gives another, its all very stressful. On the up side I have been independent of my parents financially (a repayable loan counts as independence in my book) for 3 years I will get a bit more money, however this doesn't compare to the lack of tuition fee funding. I suspect I'll be asking the bank of mum and dad for a loan for those fees! Even if I saved like crazy I'm not sure I could save enough to cover 4 years worth of tuition fees which will probably come to over £12,000 - ouchies!

Mum has a vision that I'll somehow get a well paid, but very part time (?1 day a week spread over a few dasy?!) Which will somehow pay me well. I suspect this may be optimistic and that a law firm may actually not be interested, or not interested in paying a very part time person (even if a qualified solicitor) much more than minimum wage! Fingers crossed I get something or else money is going to be even tighter!

Law wise, hey, I'm a second year trainee which is pretty cool, I get asked serious questions about the law and clients and stuff and can give semi-useful advice! Woo! I'm doing a second seat in clinical negligence now which is pretty cool, thankfully tax is a distant memory (thank god!) And I am enjoying myself! The secretaries have warmed to me ( they always start off hostile, then relax and take you under their wing!) And it really makes my day when I have to do some medical research! (Is it negligent to accidently cut a hepatic artery while doing a nephrectomy laparoscopically, and is it still negligent if you repair it? I have to force my self to NOT spend an afternoon just learning stuff about the kidney!

I also enjoy it when I go to conferences, imagine a case of bone cancer (this is a made up example) where a person has it missed on an xray, then his GP misses an abnormal blood result and he's finally treated but given the wrong dosage of whatwever drug he's on.
You then go to a discussion with Counsel (who are usually scarily clever) and your experts, so a consultant radiologist, a consultant oncologist and a GP expert, each of them will be at the very top of their field. Although you're usually frantical scribbling down a note of everything they're saying its really interesting stuff and I find I learn a lot.

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Just thought I'd swing by and say Happy New Year (and belated Happy Christmas) to everybody!

Not a lot to report generally. Work continues apace and its now only 2 months until our final seat change before qualification. I'm going to be really sorry to leave Clin Neg as I've loved my time here. Equally however, I can't wait to qualify and start at UEA. September can't come soon enough.

UEA medics sports team hasn't got far yet. The Union has some funky rule saying you can't have clubs competing with each other - apparently a medics club (playing medics tournaments) would complete somehow with the uni team. Bah.
Upside, I have permission from the NAMS tournament organisers to enter a team, I just need a team! We shall see!

I had an amazing christmas with family, and a dull new year with not much going on. Back at work today though was a bit of a shock to the system.

In other news I went to see Avatar last week in 3D, it was amazing. Probably the best film I've seen in the last 5 years! I'm going to see it again later this week!
I am reading "High Lord" the final book in the Black Magician series by Trudi Canavan. I highly recomend it for a fantasty magic-ee trilogy!

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So I figured it was time for a bit of an update, obviously I've been pretty crap at this whole blogging lark over the last few months.

Work as usual has been busy, I've finished my Clinical Negligence seat now which is a shame. I really enjoyed the medical aspects of the department and looking after sometimes quite distressed clients. On the otherhand, having done work in the department for over 8 months, there is only so many times you can be asked to sort an A4 arch of medical records before it gets a bit tedious being at the bottom of the ladder. Generally though I've loved my time there and will be sorry to move on.
The last few weeks have been especially hard at work simply because all of the trainees are fully aware we're moving seats shortly. Motivation has been hard to come by and I've found my mind wandering on more than one occasion.

Another complicating factor is the jobs market. Traditionally trainees would start looking for jobs in April/ May time - last yeae however, everything went a bit crazy as employers waited until the last possible moment before advertising. Some people I know were still looking in late august and still ended up with a job. All signs this year are that similar things will happen. Work obviously ignore this and promise they will fight for us to have jobs, the reality is they're a business not a charity. They are't going to employ someone if there isn't the work to make it worthwhile. For me this doesn't matter too much obviously, but my friends are already worying about where they'll be in september.

The complication of jobs is futher muddled by the fact that this only makes my desire to tell my friends at work about medicine, not to boast but to reassure them in some small way that if there is a job at work, that I won't be competing with them for it.

****sport is fun and going well although I feel less fit than last year! We were in Bristol last weekend for a 3 way tournament and night out which was lots of fun. Has resulted in being very tired this week. With coach travel and games and the party on Saturday I worked out I'd been awake for more than 22 hours!

Not a lot new on the medicine front - although as those of you who read the forum will know I've been applying for my student loan which has been a pain. Some of you will know that as a graduate entrant you are only entitled to receive a maintenance grant. After applying I got a nice letter from the Student Loans Company basically saying "lol no money for you m8 you're doing a 2nd degree!" Fun.
So I wrote a detailed appeal letter citing statute (and the SLC's own calculator!) Saying exactly why I was entitled to money.
Thankfully they SLC reversed their decision and I've now sent off all my supporting documents to show I'm classed as an independant student.

In other news Sister 1 is graduating this summer and has decided she wants to do a PhD and so I've been helping her out with her applications. One application she didn't tell me where it was until late in the day - I then discovered it was to Norwich of all places! This I think is possibly one of the coolest things ever. I have visions uf us meeting up for dinner or on a night out eveey now and then. One of my worries about UEA is that its just so far away from most of my family etc. Don't get me wrong I don't want to live on their doorstep (I'm currently 2 hrs 30 away by train) but its just that a 5 hour train journey changing across london is just so far. It changes from doo-able in an evening to an afternoon or morning on a train. If my sisters around firstly we may be able to steal a car off my parents - a 3h30 drive and secodnly I don't think I'll feel so isolated. Anyway, we're waiting to hear with baited breath!

I've started vaguely looking for some sort of work in norwich. - the latest one I've seen has been head of legal at the norfolk and norwich hospital. Whilei obviously won't be able to do a full time job, it would be cool if I could get some part time or flexi time assistant solicitor job. Not sure how likely that is though!!

Until next time,

Ben