The Final Steps

These are a few notes that I jotted down during those crucial days circa exempting exams.

- I called my grandma earlier (my paternal grandma, not my maternal one who has Alzheimer's now) and she was chatting as usual to me about her anak murid mengaji and all (I miss having leisurely chats like that). When I asked her to pray for me, she said (in Bahasa Kelantan), "Di samping mak ayah, tok nenek, berdoa untuk kita, kita kena berusaha. Man jada wajad." Thank you, Ma. Although I know life isn't that fair, I hope her prayers (and those of everyone else) will slightly tip the balance.

- It's so depressing finding out in these last few moments of other universities' assessments for finals. Contohnya a lot of universities only assess students on what they learn in final year, while others assess their students only on general medicine and general surgery. Some universities use the same OSCE stations for each exam day, so if you're not unlucky enough to be on the first day, you basically know what the stations will be. In Manchester, there's no certainty in anything. You don't know the syllabus properly, you don't know what exactly you need to learn (and to what extent), you don't understand the new exam system, you don't know what will come up in the exams (so you have to study everything from Semester 1), you don't understand the exam questions (which has nothing to do with English proficiency), you don't know what the examiners are looking for, you don't know shit. And obviously, nobody at the university cares to explain, especially since you're in Preston, which is probably why all the revision sessions are in Manchester and we have to travel almost 4 hours daily to attend 3 hours of revision lectures.

Then there's the OSCE marking system. Say there are five major aspects you have to fulfill. Each aspect has four possible marks: 1 - student doesn't know/do much, 2 - student partially fulfills all criteria, 3 - fulfills most, 4 - fulfills all. If you get a full 4 for each of those five aspects, the maximum mark you can get is 5/7. And the passing mark per station is 4/7. To get a 6 or 7, you'd have to do extra things as well. And in the end, the final mark for each stations is up to the examiner to award - if they're impressed with you, you might get a 6; if they think you're just rubbish coz you're following a checklist, they'll probably give you a 4 (if you're lucky). And remember, when they're in doubt about whether to give a 3 or a 4 (or any other mark), in the exempting exams, they are asked to give the lower mark. Yay.

- I don't understand how some people can be slightly insensitive at such a time. I've never been more horrified in my life, and yet some people can say that failure is common and it shows that Allah wants to test us. Yes, that's true, but that's not really something you wanna hear right before you take your finals. And ada pulak yang lain duk cakap senang je exam, kerja nanti lagi susah. Like seriously? You can probably get 9As in PMR if you do it with your eyes closed, but I wouldn't say it to my brother before he took his exams. Because obviously it is easy for me to say that PMR is a piece of cake at my stage now, but it wasn't as simple when I was 15 and sitting for it.

- Tensionnya tengok gambar orang lain graduate. Tengok kawan2 yang memang konfem dah grad pun sedih, inikan pulak tengok gambar kawan2 yang baru habis exams and results belum keluar tapi dah yakin gila and confirm graduate. It's so unfair that some students can be so confident about passing their exams, and yet us kids are struggling to survive here. I don't know how many times I cried thinking about that.

- Life is so unfair sometimes. I thought it's supposed to be "you reap what you sow". Then how come some people can pass exams and do so well so effortlessly whereas others work so hard, with sweat and tears, yet don't succeed.

- I hate it when people said "it's gonna be ok" or "you'll definitely pass". How the f*cking heck do you know that it'll be alright? It's so easy for others to say that when in reality, there's no telling who'll pass and who'll fail. If it was as simple as reading all the books and learning all the facts, then maybe passing is something achievable. But that's not how it is. I know people who got honours and distinctions in their written exams, but failed the OSCE. How does that even make sense?

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As most of you probably know, Manchester medics recently sat for their exempting exams, so called as if you're lucky to pass in the first round, you're exempted from sitting the May exams. But if you fail any of the three exams by even one mark, you have to sit all three again. Last year, half of the Malaysians failed the exempting exams, so imagine how scared we were of anything similar happening again. All of us worked so so hard, harder than we've ever worked before. Our efforts were often accompanied by lots of tears and sweat (ok la, sweat tak sangat la sebab sejuk), and also the occasional manic laughter. At first, I thought it was just me, so it was a great relief to know that my friends were going through the same thing. I bet if we went to a GP, we could have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder - crying so hard for fear of failing the exams one minute (habis kering kulit muka sebab asyik nangis), then laughing at ourselves for not working harder before in the next minute. We often woke up in the middle of the night from nightmares about exams and other medically-related things, e.g. one of the guys often talked in his sleep saying things like "Refer to dermatology", "Refer to urology" etc. It was so bad that even after the exams were over, I would suddenly wake up thinking "Is it exam day?", "Have I done my exams yet?", and it was hard to adapt to not having exams during the first few days post-exams.

And then there was the anxiety of waiting for the results. I actually arrived at the state of acceptance a few days before the OSCE. Which in a way was a good defense mechanism for me, coz then at least I wouldn't feel so upset if I did fail, since the likelihood was very high. That's why when the results came out, and after I checked it was actually my results more than five times and made Kadir check them a few times as well, I felt quite blasé about it. In fact, I was more excited seeing Pierce Brosnan in Athens than getting my results.

There isn't much to celebrate about anyway when people you know haven't passed. The exams and the days running up to it were one of the most painful experiences in my life, and I hate to think that anyone I know has to go through it again. Where do people find the strength?