And the anatomy again...

Despite this, I did not stress myself out during the preparation, nor during the exam itself. The state of one’s mind is always a big factor during oral exams, as the professor can sense student’s fear and will try to break him. As I entered the exam room after passing both of the pre- requisite tests, I was praying to choose a good question triplet. Unfortunately, I picked one of the worst triplets I could have, containing cytogenetics, heredity and genetic material distribution among prokaryotes. I immediately felt stress and fear of failing reach my mind, nevertheless, I kept my cool and did my best to prepare everything I had learnt during the year.

Despite the unfortunate choice, I managed to discuss the topics with my professor for almost 2 hours and was sent home with more than I could wish for, an A. After such an excruciating exam I had 5 weeks of holidays ahead of me, which I spent snowboarding on both Czech as well as Italian mountains. Thanks to this I managed to mentally relax after weeks of constant studying, allowing me to prepare my brain capacity for the subsequent semester, which is going to be harder than the previous one.

Because I successfully passed my anatomy exam, I decided it would be the best for me to apply for a position of a demonstration assistant during dissections, in order to strengthen and enhance my anatomical knowledge. At first I applied for a winter dissections, however, there was an extreme number of applicants from all the medicine students across the years. This made it impossible to be accepted, as there were many people who studied anatomy for many years and have assisted during multiple dissections, thus having an advantage over me. As I expected, I did not get accepted for this position, nevertheless, I was stubborn and wanted to get the position. I applied again in the beginning of the summer semester and was successful, despite the immense amount of students applying. In the following weeks I will be assisting during 3 body dissections, from which I will gain mainly anatomical experience, but also credits as well as a little bit of money for the time spent teaching younger students.

After successfully completing the biology and genetics exam, I was driven to learn more about this revolutionary field of science. Together with my friend I decided to ask, if there could possibly be a place for two young medics, eager to gain more genetical knowledge and experience in the laboratory. Contrary to the expectations, we were accepted and started working under a PhD. student. So far we assisted her with multiple procedures, including PCR, DNA isolation and nutrigenetic experiments on rodents, and many more are to come.

Thanks to the fact that I already studied histology and I’m seeing it again, combined with my anatomical knowledge, everything is starting to make more sense. I feel confident more than before, and through intense studying sessions every day I am getting closer to the goal of completing my histology exam by the end of the summer semester. In spite of the fact that histology has only 83 exam questions, it is also a very feared exam, as the professors are often more rigorous than professors on the institute of anatomy.

I am soon to have an exam from medical English, which is quite easy for me, thanks to the intensive English studies on Open Gate. This is why I asked to complete this exam earlier, so that I could have more space and energy for more important exams.