Hello all!
I hope everyone had a good Christmas!
As the title suggests, mine was spent doing sweet FA…
I have however just got news that my school is closed tomorrow, ad possibly Friday, so thank you snow!:)

One positive thing I did do over the Christmas was go to the RCSI Open Day. I won’t go into too much detail because the day was perfectly summarised in Ally’s blog, but it was awesome! The place to me has been the best med school so far, just far more friendly and warm than Trinity or UCD. The staff and students were all really nice and it was great to hear the course from a students perspective than just lecturers. And for the best thing, out of the three med schools in Dublin, the points were lowest in RCSI! Pharmacy was another course I was really interested in doing and it seems really good there. One thing that impressed me above all others about the College was the atmosphere portrayed by the students. Unlike TCD or UCD where the place feels very impersonal, the RCSI has a very small population where everybody seems to know everybody!

One thing my day at RCSI actually gave me was the will to start back studying! Up until then, I had taken a full two weeks off and had no desire to start back. The day however put things in perspective, regardless what I wanna do next year, I’m gonna have to do some serious work between now and June, I’ve officially marked January 15th as the half-way mark in the year, so the easy part is almost over!

Mocks are rapidly approaching too. 28 days in fact! I’m lucky in a sense that our course in almost every subject is complete. Biology is the one we’re a little behind on. Getting another new teacher when we go back, our 3rd Biology teacher in 3 years!

Although this Christmas wasn’t one for study, it gave me a chance to hit the gym and go out running more often! I got a Nike+ iPod sensor for Christmas. For anyone who doesn’t know what they are, it’s a little chip you put into your runner and it connects with your iPod to give you all sorts of information about your run such as distance and speed! I’ve got 50km run since Christmas Day so hopefully it’ll continue!
As for New Years Resolutions, I’ve decided I’m gonna run the Dublin Marathon in October. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was 8 so hopefully it’ll work out!

I’ve just registered to sit the HPAT also. Fingers crossed I’ll get a place in Dublin. The last thing anyone would want is to get up at 5 in the morning to go to Waterford for the test! Anyone know if it’s only the RDS they use or is there other centres?

Anyway I better finish off, I still have and entire Irish Paper 2 and a Lear Q to start! Thank God I’m not back tomorrow! I’ll leave you with some funny lines I found that we’re “used” in English Leaving Cert essays, enjoy!

The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

McMurphy fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a paper bag filled with vegetable soup.

He was as tall as a six-foot-three-inch tree.

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease

The plan was simple, like my brother Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for while.

The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a lamppost.

The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free cashpoint.

It was a working class tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with their power tools.

Hello Everybody!!

Since it’s been aaaaages since my last blog, you might think I’d have a lot to say….Do I??!!! Um…no, not really….

Anyhoo, how’s everyone xmas been? I hope you all had a good one and said f*ck the study! My Christmas was pretty much spent doing Sweet FA…I barely even bothered getting dressed. But I needed the relaxing break of TV, endless cups of tea and DVDs. I’m all re-energised now though with nothing to do. So, I started my history project.

I actually love history but for some reason when it comes to tests such as the mocks and the actual LC, I can’t remember a thing! I spent 10 minutes during the last year’s history exam begging my brain to think of something about dictators but my brain let me down and I practically ran from the hall with the examiner thinking I was on crack or something. The worst bit was that for the mocks, I knew every single question that was going to come up so you think, easy peasy, right? Eh….no. I managed to fail that should-a been an easy A exam because I couldn’t think…at all! So, how do you study for history? I don’t exactly know but I will figure it out….later.

But for now, I’m focusing on my project, the one thing that doesn’t want make me want to reach for a bottle of vodka whenever I think of it. I’m doing mine on The Moors Murders. Why? I don’t know…because I can’t do something normal like The Titanic or The Holocaust, I have to go for the weird stuff. But I nearly have it done so yaaaay! Downside, I haven’t slept at night in a week…aaaargh! I really enjoyed doing the project though. It took a while to research and it involved getting in-touch with a distant cousin who now thinks I’m some sort of crazy nutjob with sociopathic tendencies (I’m not though…promise!)

On another completely random note…The CAO is completely finito. I’m adamant that I’m not going to change it on a daily basis like I did last year. Even though, I can’t make a decision to save my life, journalism in UL is my final 1st choice so fingers crossed this time!! I’ve lost my CAO number anyway so I can’t change it even if I do decide one day that I wanted to do psychology or something. I do that…A lot!

So, I think I’ve blabbered on enough now. I’m going to get going on my economics and the exciting chapter of…wait for it….International Trade…woo hoo!

(I’m such a wild wan really! )

G’luck Everyone!

So I was at the RCSI open day this morning as the title will suggest:) Although I will probably be biased as I haven’t been to any other open day I will be very honest! I thought it was a great day,there were quite a few people, considering the road conditions, around 500+ I’d say…It ran from 10am to 2pm. We were brought into a lecture theater and were spoken to by RCSI staff, present and past students of school of med, pharmacy and physiotherapy. The admissions office also spoke to us about the HPAT, general admissions to the college, the point system and the random selection process..we were then brought up to an exhibition upstairs that included workshops and info on different subjects in RCSI. These included; biology, pharmacy,GP,pathology,anatomy and much much more, lecturers and staff members were there on hand as were pupils to answer any questions we had. We then returned to the lecture theatre to get more talks and a junior doctor’s perspective and also an idea of his time in RCSI.

Overall I thought the day lived up to my expectations. I thought the lectures were really well done, kept us interested whilst at the same time informed, the students’ attitudes were just brilliant, they were probably the NICEST people I will ever have met, they were so enthusiastic about the school and remained realistic about the whole experience, outlining the pros and cons, these students really put it into perspective,a lot of them first did different courses and then decided on medicine, their opinions really gave me at least, an insight into what the school really has done for them…I’ll always remember those students if nothing else, they were just…it’s like unnatural how nice they were!!! ha:) A 6th year med student and 4th year med student highlighted the different clubs and societies the school offers, wow…there’s such a variety of crazy, funny and basically any and everything known to man…there’s clubs for it…the latest: The friendship club, the gourmet food club and much more, RCSI is competitive in sports too, having a current student represent Ireland in the winter Olympics is something alright!

Something everyone seemed to mention was the fact that the school was very inter-cultural (and extremely proud of it),as in they have students from all over the world, the 6th year med student stating that he was of Indian descent, from Austria and spoke french,another student was from Finland and said that approx 19% of students are not from Ireland..one student commented “You see? You’re all white!!” his fellow classmate replied “Uhhh yeah, were in the minority guys…but that’s the beauty of it..” There was defo a lot of positive energy in the room.The junior doctor’s talk was really informative, gave us a realistic idea of his actual job, he strongly said that it’s nothing like Grey’s Anatomy or ER (some ppl seriously think you get to work with amazingly handsome(P.Dempsey *cough*) doctors whilst keeping interesting relationships with different people etc, etc, he works on average 65-100 hours/week. The students actually continued to commend their teachers, saying they are the best in Europe and they are insanely talented and in general very nice:) I also loved how the school was quite small,apparantly everyone knows each other and its really tight unlike a campus in UCD/TCD etc, that stood out to me i think:)

I was sitting in the theatre with 500 other people wanting the same thing as me, we all thought the same! So as you can prob guess, man were we motivated, hearing people next to me whisper to their neighbours “I’m gonna go home and study now”, “year right” were the replies..it  felt as though i was thinking aloud..over 3000 people apply for med every year, less than 40 places are available for undergrads in RCSI and its random selection…so,like I usually do, I got really nervous and started predicting the future, “omg I’ll have to repeat..how am I gonna get in…seriously though..me? I don’t study! ahh God!!!!”, I gave up though, there was no point having such a negative attitude, I can only do my best right?

We then got a tour of the college, I loved the little community-like facilities and lounge rooms, but my favourite part was the anatomy room…omg…the smell of formaldehyde was just unreal! Bodies were covered in thick white plastic and laid out in a linear pattern on metal tables, there was over 30 bodies I think….just being there was so cool..ha..i get amused way to easily:(

Anyway, I thought the day was great, I really recommend going next year if you want to do any of the following: RC001 Medicine,RC101 Graduate Medicine,RC004 Physiotherapy,RC005 Pharmacy..They like to have an idea of numbers so around about September 14th 2011 make sure to get a ticket (just check out their website and follow links). I’m more than 100% sure this is the college for me and its #1 on my CAO right now..if anything I’m motivated to study more, really am:) Hope i haven’t bored you to death at this stage, if you couldn’t make it iIhope you got an idea of how it went down, most people enjoyed it too, not only was the school of medicine well presented the other school of Physio and Pharmacy were also well introduced.

It was funny,we were eating lunch in St. Stephen’s green shopping centre and I was telling my mum about the day, she got really enthusiastic! Ha, it was funny, I was just like “Hmm,yeah pathology and forensics seemed really interesting, but then again, Dr. Hugh didn’t like it, now he’s in Psych now!”, she replied by going into detail how pathology is lab based and kind of boring if you prefer more interactions with patients and then started talking about how she loved doing the forensics module and seeing if it was animal/human blood, which way the knife went in of how the bullet cracked this and that…it went on for a while and I just sat there, listening, eating my soup and brown bread, nodded every now and then, looked up too actually…she was just so happy, so I let her proceed, recalling her time in the good ole days. Good stuff:)

Anyways, Bonne chance for now, I shall and will see you all soon =)