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- Feb 21, 2018
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I am a year 5 medical student studying in a 6 year program of medical school in Asia and I am totally confused right now.
I did quite well in my preclinical years, especially the written part, but my OSCE performance was subpar as I felt extremely agitated and nervous when performing examination in front of an examiner. I thought I was going to ace my clinical years however I was wrong. I could not simply adapt to clinical years. Those who used to be academically below me is now surpassing me and I feel that I am lacking behind. There is simply too much to study and I could not handle the workload. Despite doing well in my preclinical years, my memory has always been poor or extremely poor, as I always forget what I have studied right away. My memory retention rate is very low and my revision tends to be inefficient. I could still compensate this during pre-clinical years as there was more leisure time for revision and materials needed to memorise was not too great. However in clinical years, most of my time is spend in the ward or attending lesson, and I have less time to revise. Moreover there are much more to study in clinical years, and I simply do not have the time or the memory to revise. To make matters worse I simply rely on forced memorisation in the preclinical years without really using my brain to think or digest information, and now I am in trouble since my brain does not really work in terms of quick thinking, which is desperately needed for clinical years in which one needs to assimilate all knowledge together with clear logic and quick thinking.
Also I think I have some performance anxiety, in which I always screw up and wet my pants during clinical exams, which take place every several months with real patients and strict examiners. I always crack under pressure and I am always extremely nervous and agitated with clinical exams. There are still many more clinical exams and I simply do not know how to handle the stress and the uncertain future.
I did quite well in my preclinical years, especially the written part, but my OSCE performance was subpar as I felt extremely agitated and nervous when performing examination in front of an examiner. I thought I was going to ace my clinical years however I was wrong. I could not simply adapt to clinical years. Those who used to be academically below me is now surpassing me and I feel that I am lacking behind. There is simply too much to study and I could not handle the workload. Despite doing well in my preclinical years, my memory has always been poor or extremely poor, as I always forget what I have studied right away. My memory retention rate is very low and my revision tends to be inefficient. I could still compensate this during pre-clinical years as there was more leisure time for revision and materials needed to memorise was not too great. However in clinical years, most of my time is spend in the ward or attending lesson, and I have less time to revise. Moreover there are much more to study in clinical years, and I simply do not have the time or the memory to revise. To make matters worse I simply rely on forced memorisation in the preclinical years without really using my brain to think or digest information, and now I am in trouble since my brain does not really work in terms of quick thinking, which is desperately needed for clinical years in which one needs to assimilate all knowledge together with clear logic and quick thinking.
Also I think I have some performance anxiety, in which I always screw up and wet my pants during clinical exams, which take place every several months with real patients and strict examiners. I always crack under pressure and I am always extremely nervous and agitated with clinical exams. There are still many more clinical exams and I simply do not know how to handle the stress and the uncertain future.
