The Exams.

The night before the first day of the board exam was the hardest. I thought I had the skill to sleep no matter what the circumstance is. Unfortunately, I was up almost all night tossing and turning to no avail. 

In the beginning of my first entry I asked, how do you compress 100 days, 4 exams and 3 waiting days in a single entry? I said I cant. And so I ask again, how do we compress 5 years of medical education and training into 12 exams? I don't think we also can. 

The exam was difficult. Yes, there were questions that you can answer. But there were questions which can make you go, “ANO DAW?” “UGH.” There were mentally exhausting questions, you’d rather just choose C. Of course there were the expected typographical errors, repeating questions (which are UNFORTUNATELY the questions you don’t know the answer to. There were a number of times I just wrote down a big WHY beside the repeated question out of frustration. Haha.). It was a sad and frustrating exam.

In an ideal world, the board exam should test that we have what it takes to become doctors with our knowledge of the basics of how it is to become a general practitioner. An exam to gauge how we can effectively integrate everything that we have learned and use it for practice. And the exam that we just took was perhaps only 50% of that. Probably we are already lucky since feedback from our seniors were worse; the exam maybe improving and I pray that the day would come that the board exam would ultimately be that exam.

We complain and we laugh about those questions but again, we had no choice. Sabi ko nga, kaya to, kakayanin. So like in anything and everything in life, we choose what we think is best. We give it our all. That at the end of the day, no matter what, there are no regrets.

We have an hour free after every exam, and I stayed inside the room most of the time because it was a little bit annoying to hear people talking about their answers. Trying to hold onto our reviewers as security blankets, pretending to read some more, just in case you get one item correctly from your last minute readings – laban nga daw hanggang dulo. 

People have been comparing the preparation of the board exam to be a marathon. They were right, the preparation, was the practice jogs for the race that is the exam day itself. Sitting down for more than 6 hours - was suffocating not to mention our coats were really a bit tight here in there. haha. It was mentally draining to read through the 100 questions of the 12 subjects once, twice or even more. It was emotionally challenging if you think that your fate lies in how you answer those 1200 questions. And like in any marathon, it was tempting to stop running or just do the 5k route when you signed up for 21k. But then you picture the people waiting for you at the finish line. And you eventually pick up your pace until you finish one exam at a time. One day at a time. Until it's done. 

Just like that, it’s done and as much as I am glad that it was over, there’s that nagging feeling of, yun na yun? Not because it was easy. It was not. Yun na yun pertained to the last three months of struggle. Of trying to go day by day thinking about that exam. Tapos tapos na. 1200 items which again will dictate our fate.

Four days of walking in and out of those buildings, hugging your friends to give them the boost of morale that you both need, squeezing their hands and trying your very best to reassure each other that we've done our best through sad smiles. Tapos na :)

And we have nothing else to do but to wait and be grateful for the opportunity to be one step closer to our dreams, be grateful for the strength that He has provided us for those four days. And pray some more because at the end of it all, it is in His hands, His will and in His time.