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Tuesday, January 14, 2020

As always, I seem to be drawn to blogging when I *should* be studying for an important exam (this time its for pharmacology, dear God help me). But it's been ages so I thought I'd do an update.

I'm still really enjoying 3rd year a lot. Before Christmas we started proper clinical classes with internal medicine being my group's first one. I really enjoyed it however my group's teacher was a little over-enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge, that we didn't really get as much chance to actually practice ourselves. For example, when practicing taking a patients history, he pretty much just did it himself instead of letting us. I also got annoyed when he told me that he thinks I'm really smart but to "not let" my husband see this because "men don't like it when their wives are smarter than them". Ugh. I did respond though and I said luckily my husband is a smart guy and in any case, he is secure enough in himself that he wouldn't be threatened by a smart wife. I wasn't sure if the prof was joking or not, but either way, its was inappropriate. Reminds me of how far we still have to go.

Christmas break was great. We went to New Zealand to spend some time with my husband's family. My husband and kids went earlier than I did and he and our youngest two are staying till the beginning of February and I returned back to Poland with our oldest son (he also had to go back to school).

The only thing that kind of keeps me up at night is wondering where we will end up. I discovered that if I get foundation programme training job and finish the first year, I can move to New Zealand and continue my training there. Which would be much better than spending 5 years (minimum) in the UK. Part of me likes the idea of the UK because I just like it there but the realities of living somewhere with no family or close friends around is something that I know would be hard on us. Granted that may be the case if we end up moving back to Canada and end up in a province other than Ontario.

But at the moment everything is up in the air regarding the UK and Brexit and how that will affect my prospects there. My main goal is still somewhere in Canada with my hometown's residency program being my top choice. I can't wait until I get to apply to the elective rotations, but I still have to wait a year.

Still, time is forging ahead - I'm almost 2.5 years done and after next semester I'll be half way through medical school. It's crazy when I think about it. How far I've come, how much I've learned and how much I really love this crazy profession.

But first I have to get through my pharma mid-term, a pathology test and finals for radiology and parasitology.