Hit the books

you’re not perfect

there are scars

on the surface of your heart

i’m convinced that you’ve experienced

a set of painful events throughout

your life

as you’ve become

what people refer to as broken

in my eyes, you’re the most beautiful

arrangement of broken

i’ve ever witnessed in my life

looking at you, thinking to myself

28.10.18

This is how my weekend looked like. I’ve studied French for hours every day, I baked a pumpkin cake and I watched Sabrina on my study breaks. You could say it was a great and productive weekend AND it was finally cold! It’s been raining nonstop all weekend, I am so happy.

love me when the storm arrives

love me when i’ve lost all hope

notes from my b5 binder 🌟

🕹️ 🍄 Power-Up! 🍄  🕹️

A much needed mid-week power-up.

Lets-a-go!

i♡histo

This super mushroom represents vascular invasion within a rare tumor (Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma) in the thigh of a 22 year old female. You can see that the mushroom’s spots are made of red blood cells and the surrounding large irregular cells are tumor cells.

As a medical technology student at the University of Perpetual Help, we are obligated to participate in a one year internship program with out accredited affiliations. I was assigned at Quezon Memorial Center in Lucena City. Once I’ve heard from the department that I am assigned there, I was saddened by the thought of that I wil be away again from my relatives and friends.

Months ago the internship program started, I was often frustrated, I was afraid to communicate personally with staffs and patients. I always remind myself that there’s no room for error in my field because even a small mistake can cause a big and serious problem to patient’s diagnosis or health. I lack on confidence, but as the time goes by, I learned to adjust and blend in. Most of the staffs are friendly and jolly, some are not (in my perspective).

Some taught us step by step procedure, what to do and what not to do inside and outside of the lab. Most especially, they taught us how to be a reliable and a better medtech. I adore some staffs for being a hardworking professionals, and they ensures that they give the best results to the doctors and patients. But ofcourse some takes us for granted. They become dependent to us. There are some staffs, for an instance, that gives mea hard time working in the lab because they always made me do stuff for them.

I was blown away by the number of in-patients and out-patients in the hospital. There are so many work that needs to be done in a day, from patient identification to releasing of results. Being a public worker is a tiring job and requires a lot of patience and understanding. I never expected to experience to work in the lab with high-end machines, i thought we’ll be working manually since it is a Provincial Hospital.

I think being an intern here in QMC is a big step up for us because there’s so many cases that we’ve encountered. We are trained to be ready when worst comes to worst. I’ve formed meaningful relationships with patients, with the staffs and with my fellow interns.

I am thankful to our Training Officer, Chief MedTech and to our Pathologist (which is my uncle), for welcoming us and for treating us nicely since our day one there. I developed more and more confidence, I am surprised when my Senior Staffs trusts me for my judgement. I’ve learned more than I ever expected, true that experience is the best teacher. As my internship draws to a close and contemplate back on all I have learned, I realized what an excellent experience this has been. There’s so much to learn on school but a hands on approach has been immeasurable.

The laboratory department was helpful to us, the staffs are also helpful when I had questions. This internship made the practical knowledge mirror that of an actual job search. Internship or “On the Job Training” helped me a lot, though I was not paid, working 8-hrs or 16-hrs per day, I was not getting extra credits for working over time but that was okay. I was gaining experience which is more worthwhile to my future career success than any amount of money or merits.

This was a tough, stressful, tiring internship that requires all of my energy and the time of this semester. But all of the stress was very worth the fun. Though we still have a month in this program and hospital, I believe that this internship was successful in cultivating our knowledge . I want to give thanks to our staffs for giving us an amazing experience and opportunity to learn from them who have so much experience in what they do.

As I end the first semester of my final year in medical school (bachelor’s degree), my goals are plain, I just want to do good, do right by my patient’s. I will make mistakes but the catch is that I will learn from them. There will be inevitable moments where I will not know the best to do, decision and judgements hitting the day with each having potentially consequences. But I will always do right. As Mark Reid said and I quote: “We do not study to pass the test, we study to prepare for the day when we are the only thing between the patient and the grave.”

As a medical technology student at the University of Perpetual Help, we are obligated to participate in a one year internship program with out accredited affiliations. I was assigned at Quezon Memorial Center in Lucena City. Once I’ve heard from the department that I am assigned there, I was saddened by the thought of that I wil be away again from my relatives and friends.

Months ago the internship program started, I was often frustrated, I was afraid to communicate personally with staffs and patients. I always remind myself that there’s no room for error in my field because even a small mistake can cause a big and serious problem to patient’s diagnosis or health. I lack on confidence, but as the time goes by, I learned to adjust and blend in. Most of the staffs are friendly and jolly, some are not (in my perspective).

Some taught us step by step procedure, what to do and what not to do inside and outside of the lab. Most especially, they taught us how to be a reliable and a better medtech. I adore some staffs for being a hardworking professionals, and they ensures that they give the best results to the doctors and patients. But ofcourse some takes us for granted. They become dependent to us. There are some staffs, for an instance, that gives mea hard time working in the lab because they always made me do stuff for them.

I was blown away by the number of in-patients and out-patients in the hospital. There are so many work that needs to be done in a day, from patient identification to releasing of results. Being a public worker is a tiring job and requires a lot of patience and understanding. I never expected to experience to work in the lab with high-end machines, i thought we’ll be working manually since it is a Provincial Hospital.

I think being an intern here in QMC is a big step up for us because there’s so many cases that we’ve encountered. We are trained to be ready when worst comes to worst. I’ve formed meaningful relationships with patients, with the staffs and with my fellow interns.

I am thankful to our Training Officer, Chief MedTech and to our Pathologist (which is my uncle), for welcoming us and for treating us nicely since our day one there. I developed more and more confidence, I am surprised when my Senior Staffs trusts me for my judgement. I’ve learned more than I ever expected, true that experience is the best teacher. As my internship draws to a close and contemplate back on all I have learned, I realized what an excellent experience this has been. There’s so much to learn on school but a hands on approach has been immeasurable.

The laboratory department was helpful to us, the staffs are also helpful when I had questions. This internship made the practical knowledge mirror that of an actual job search. Internship or “On the Job Training” helped me a lot, though I was not paid, working 8-hrs or 16-hrs per day, I was not getting extra credits for working over time but that was okay. I was gaining experience which is more worthwhile to my future career success than any amount of money or merits.

This was a tough, stressful, tiring internship that requires all of my energy and the time of this semester. But all of the stress was very worth the fun. Though we still have a month in this program and hospital, I believe that this internship was successful in cultivating our knowledge . I want to give thanks to our staffs for giving us an amazing experience and opportunity to learn from them who have so much experience in what they do.

As I end the first semester of my final year in medical school (bachelor’s degree), my goals are plain, I just want to do good, do right by my patient’s. I will make mistakes but the catch is that I will learn from them. There will be inevitable moments where I will not know the best to do, decision and judgements hitting the day with each having potentially consequences. But I will always do right. As Mark Reid said and I quote: “We do not study to pass the test, we study to prepare for the day when we are the only thing between the patient and the grave.”

Everyone tells you that med school is hard, but that’s all they really say.

Here are a few things I wish I knew before I entered it:

1. You will be extremely grade conscious “GC”, or if not, you will wish you were, especially by the end of the year. I know someone who made an Excel file that computes your grade to the decimal, which is extremely useful. I highly recommend you be “GC” early on because you need every point you can get.

2. There’s a difference between true learning and being test-ready. You want to be the best doctor you can be – great! But learning things that will be helpful in the hospital may not necessarily help you pass exams. You need the skill of test-taking or predicting questions. Study old exams from upperclassmen so you know what’s expected of you since it’s impossible to study everything. There are “must-knows,” and there are “nice-to-knows.”

3. If you don’t already have a dorm, you will wish you had. When you live more than 30 minutes away from the school, especially in Metro Manila, traffic is the worst. Traveling is exhausting, and all the energy you waste is the same energy that you could be using to study or rest.

4. You will have less time with your family. Even if you live with them or not, you will see them less and regret it. I’ve known classmates whose parents got seriously ill or even passed away while they were busy with school.

5. It’s all you will think about – and you can’t help it. If you don’t eat and breathe your medical life, then you won’t pass. Take a break, though, when needed. Your mental and emotional health is more important than you think.

6. Talking to non-med people will seem weird. But once you meet your non-med friends, it will be like a breath of fresh air, and you will realize that there is life outside medical school.

7. It isn’t just the tuition fee that’s expensive. So are the books, so are the notes you need to photocopy, the dissection kits, the coffee, etc. You might even get things you don’t need but will help (like my 3D anatomy app).

8. There is no such thing as over-studying. Sometimes professors make you memorize a huge table of information only to ask one question, and you memorize it, because you need that point. Even if you started weeks ahead, you will study until the very last minute.

9. Studying ahead will come a long way. It’s so easy to lag behind, since every day is full of new material. Studying ahead means sleeping early one extra night, something your future self will be thankful for.

10. People who say they didn’t study enough or at all are lying. You will feel relieved that someone is just like you or worse – until you see that they topped the test. They just don’t want to raise people’s expectations, so don’t be fooled. Don’t let the efforts of your classmates determine how much you should study for an exam.

11. You will have moral dilemmas. To cheat or not, to spread high yield notes or not, to peek at your classmate’s grades or not – those are the questions. While cheating has the gravest repercussions, other issues can affect your relationship with your classmates – the same people you will stick with for years. It’s small decisions like this that will determine what type of doctor you’ll be.

12. You will change your study style more often than you’re comfortable with. You will try studying alone, or in a coffee shop, or with friends, or while listening to EDM. Though, in the end, no matter what anyone tells you, your study style should be your own.

13. You will wonder if you should have chosen a better pre-med course. There is no perfect pre-med course. Whether you took biology, nursing, or even accounting, your pre-med can only help you so far because at least 90% of what you’ll learn is new.

14. High-yield materials are the way to go. It’s impossible to cover everything, so get these from upperclassmen or fellow classmates. Try asking those who get highest in the tests.

15. You will want to give up, and that’s normal. Every med student goes through this. Just get through it, and this too shall pass.

16. You will fail – and that is OK. I can’t even count the number of times I failed myself. If you didn’t study enough, don’t cram next time. If you think your grades are in trouble, consult. Just make ways to be better.

17. You don’t have to be smart. You just have to really want it and work really hard. You can have average IQ, but be the best doctor in the country.

18. You will realize that you must really [expletive] want to be a doctor. Because deep down, you really think that every sleepless night, missed meal, lost weekend without family or friends, must be worth it.

You will be God’s healing hands. You may have to be a little crazy to put yourself through this, but you can do it! Before you know it, it’s over, and you will be so proud of yourself. If this is really what you want, it will be the most fulfilling decision of your life.

So welcome to medical school. Welcome to the science of saving lives! May God bless you!