Mike_the_Medic's Livejournal

Mon, 27 Feb 2006 22:25:40 GMT

I've made it through the whole afternoon without any caffeine! :-D

Right... bed (you never know, I might actually get a solid night's sleep tonight!)

Addenbrookes

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:38:33 GMT

"Dear Michael
I am pleased to offer you a place on the Cambridge course in Clinical Medicine to read for the Cambridge degrees of MB and BChir..."

I got in!!!! :)

In fact all four King's medics managed to get their first-choice places. The offer is conditional on me getting a 3rd or better... hmmm!

This means that I'll be around Cambridge for a few more years yet! More to the point, I can start cementing in some of the plans that I have - hopefully I'll be with the station for another year, so there's loads more to achieve there, and I'm going to have to start looking for accomodation that is flexible enough to account for the 5 week blocks I'll be out of Cambridge for next year.

In other news, went to Queens Ents last night for "Gold" - the 80's night. It was fantastic, and at £1 per shot, you easily make back the £4 door fare compared with drinking in town! They also pull out all the stops and have full disco lighting, smoke machines and one huge strobe! Plus you'd have to be a complete retard not to be able to pull in there....

So technically I could slack off work and live the life of a real student for a few months... tempting!

Hello there!

Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:57:27 GMT

Well, I've not updated this in a good 5 months or so!
I can scarcely see through the dust stirred up from touching this journal!

Here's what's happened to me:
-Had a great May Week (3 events: Emma, King's, Darwin)
-Spent 2 weeks recovering from burn-out (again),
-Programmed a website for 4 weeks
-Went sailing for a long weekend
-Toured Australia for a month
-Came to Cambridge early to do a PfP course to find out it was moved at the last minute to December
-Rebranded radio station
-Launched this year's programming etc

All in all I'm ok, 6/10 I'd say. It's been a very busy start to term with our station relaunch - we're trying to make it as big as possible. Most members of the committee (notably Charles and Will C) have been absolutely superb, making this rebranding go extremely smoothly. I have had a few problems with personnel, some damage to the studio and a disruptive bit of outside broadcast kit, but nothing I can't handle! Most of my work this week has been co-ordinative: purely answering e-mails and nipping to the studio to throw together bits of audio, grab equipment etc. I'd like to get my teeth into setting up the next major project for the station, or helping with the backlog of new station members, but my timetable is erratically filled up with various small tasks that prevent me from being in one place at any regular time. I just need a bit of structure with my subject and someone to reassure me that there's nothing wrong with having such a demanding hobby as radio alongside a Part II!

Neuroscience is very interesting on the one-hand, definitely the right subject for me, but I can't help feeling that it's not challenging enough. I've not yet got the hang of reading around lectures (in medicine Part I you haven't got the time!), and essays still prevail which are definitely not my forte. It's also a very lax timetable with only 12 hours a week, I must admit I'm a little bored at times having come from 27 hours a week!!

Hopefully, when I'm finally able to gauge how much reading around I need to do to assimilate the background info, I'll be able to pick areas of interest to study in depth and so flesh out this subject into something a bit more tangible. The fact that I have to apply to clinical school in December and be interviewed once again in January is also playing quite heavily on my mind at the moment- it's a big event that only Oxbridge medics have to go through and exists purely because the Government won't fund as many places on the clinical course in Cambridge as there are medic undergrads. This is also not being helped by having these random hours of emptyness during the day.

So that leaves the social/personal bit of my life: well, it's almost non existent at the moment. This is thanks to another current bout of insomnia (happens regularly) which is sucking away a lot of my free time by not having any energy (making me appear lazy which is not a good thing), and the fact that my friends are sedentary. My friends at college, although great, have reverted to sitting in their rooms every evening and have become dependent upon their own clique. Everyone is either a boatie so sleeps evenings, or has a boyfriend/girlfriend and spends every evening with them. The only time we really do anything is on a Friday night at the Pav, and even then it takes a fair bit of leveridge to get an appreciable number to go!
I know it's incredibly selfish, however I missed out on a lot last year purely due to my workload and could really do with a party break (I'm convinced that last year's workload has turned me into a boring antisocial academic obsessive)! Anyway, I'm sure things will pick up socially, further into term once everyone gets settled in properly. I will be going to my department's Happy Hour this weekend to get to know the other Neuroscientists a bit better!

So basically I'm still finding my feet with this Part II. The station is going well, a few more things need to be clicked into place and I'm going to try my damned hardest to hit the magic 10,000 termly listeners this term. I've also started preparing myself for these clinical school interviews which can only be a good thing, even if they are a pain in the arse to think about this early.

Right despite it being before 10pm, I'm going to bed... hopefully I'll get a decent night's sleep!

Blowing the dust of my LJ:

Thu, 18 Aug 2005 23:56:41 GMT

Yeah I know I've not updated in ages...

In a quick two-line summary:
I've been busy doing radio work which has blown up BIG and freelance web production, wish I had more time for fun. Going to Oz in a week :o)

So to ease me back into LJing, here's a meme:

More Scientific

You have:
85% SCIENTIFIC INTUITION and
70% EMOTIONAL INTUITION

The graph on the right represents your place in Intuition 2-Space. As you can see, you scored above average on emotional intuition and well above average on scientific intuition.Your scientific intuition is stronger than your emotional intuition.

Your Emotional Intuition
score is a measure of how well you understand people, especially their
unspoken needs and sympathies. A high score score usually indicates
social grace and persuasiveness. A low score usually means you're good
at Quake.

Your Scientific Intuition
score tells you how in tune you are with the world around you; how well
you understand your physical and intellectual environment. People with
high scores here are apt to succeed in business and, of course, the
sciences.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on Scientific
You scored higher than 99% on Interpersonal

Link: The 2-Variable Intuition Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating

Hmmm... not bad!

Part II... correction

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 21:38:30 GMT

Well, I've just received this e-mail:

"think the emails got mixed. Mike, you got Neuroscience, Micky, you got Path."

So firstly, congratulations to Mickey for getting his first choice Pathology!

And secondly:

I got onto Neuroscience

Oh fuck yeah!!!!
(Excuse me while I go to my balcony and scream my head off!)

Part II...

Thu, 23 Jun 2005 21:13:38 GMT

Well I've not updated for aaaaages!!!

Most of it has been due to general exams, May Bumps business and 3 May Balls :o). Got loads to report so will definitely write about those soon.

However, something much more pressing is my Part II option decisions. We are asked to list three Part II subjects in order of preference with students who get the top grades being given priority on their first choice course.

My choices were:

1- Neuroscience (Research)
2- Physiology (Research)
3- Pharmacology (Dissertation)

Out of those, only number 1 is a hotly contested option.
So I get an e-mail today that reads:
"You have a place on the pathology course next year."

So I'm now wondering how the hell I've ended up with pathology and therefore failing to get even my third choice! This either implies that either there's been a giant cock-up, or I've performed incredibly badly in these exams to fail to secure even my third choice.

However, if it is the latter, there's something that doesn't quite add up:
Other medics I know who had the same first choice as me and have failed to secure their first choice have just been sent an e-mail saying "You have not been successful in getting a place on your first choice course. I will be in contact shortly when a place has been found for you on an alternative course."

So, if places are dished out in order of Part 1B exam performance and those other medics are yet to have their subjects determined, how come I've ended up with a pathology place already? Is pathology an absolute dreg of a subject provided by default to medics who do badly? How have they been able to absolutely confirm that I've not got onto one of my three choices so soon when other medics are still waiting?

Or have I just happened to pick three subjects that are the most popular amongst the best students?

Finally and most interestingly, after all the work I've put in this year and how much I understand my subject, how the hell could I have done worse than last year (which was a 2.i)? I swear that the exams went much better than last year, and even though I'm repeatedly penalised here in Cambridge for being bad at writing essays, the essays I wrote were all factually correct and succinct which usually = 2.i. I've also passed all my 2nd MB exams, and was initially predicted a 2.i/1 so surely I couldn't have done THAT badly???

Would someone please tell me what the hell is going on!?!?

Dechasmisation

Thu, 26 May 2005 19:21:01 GMT

A little bit of progress to report on with regards to revision. I'm still pretty fucked with Human Repro and Neuro, however my damage-limiting strategy looks as though it might work...

(bold indicates chasm)
Neuro:
CSF & Blood brain barrier
Somatosensory & Pain
Pharm of pain
Motor
Visual
Auditory (< Saturday)
Olfactory (< saturday)
Neural regeneration
Emotion
Psychological disorders (< crammage)
Memory (< crammage)
Psychobiology (< Saturday)
CNS Pharm
+ pracs (< Thursday crammage)

Pharm:
Drug interactions with receptors
ANS pharmacology
Cardiorenal pharm
Anthelmintics
Pharmacokinetics (< Wednesday crammage)
Chemotherapy
Inflammation (< crammage)
+ pracs

Path:
Immunology (< I suck at this)
Tolerance & Autoimmunity
Virology (& TSEs)
Helminths
Fungi < all that's left
Bacteriology
Cancer
Atherosclerosis

Human Repro:
Gametogenesis
Coition & Placentation
Maternal changes at pregnancy (< will be complete by tomorrow)
Ethics (< crammage)
Demographics (< crammage)

Special Options:
Janus Drugs (< Sunday crammage)
Somatosensory (< these are essay-only exams and have a lower pass mark (thank god!) Sunday crammage)

Welcome to Hell...

Mon, 23 May 2005 23:38:35 GMT

Well this is it once again, exam term!

The stakes are really really high this time round: I've got five subjects to master, 14 exams to be able to complete, and just 4 days left to revise. The problem with my revision strategy so far is that it enabled me to learn the concepts really well, but at the expense of actual factual detail. The result is some gaping chasms in my revision for some subjects:

(bold indicates chasm)
Neuro:
CSF & Blood brain barrier
Somatosensory & Pain
Pharm of pain
Motor
Visual
Auditory
Olfactory
Neural regeneration
Emotion
Psychological disorders
Memory
Psychobiology
CNS Pharm
+ pracs

Pharm:
Drug interactions with receptors
ANS pharmacology
Cardiorenal pharm
Anthelmintics
Pharmacokinetics
Chemotherapy
Inflammation
+ pracs

Path:
Immunology (< I suck at this)
Tolerance & Autoimmunity
Virology (& TSEs)
Helminths
Fungi
Bacteriology
Cancer
Atherosclerosis

Human Repro:
Gametogenesis
Coition & Placentation
Maternal changes at pregnancy
Ethics
Demographics

Special Options:
Janus Drugs
Somatosensory < these are essay-only exams and have a lower pass mark (thank god!)

Medicine is simply not like other subjects: we don't get the luxury of a selection of questions to choose from, nor do we have a gradient of classes. Instead, there's a 70% pass mark cut off on most subjects (lowered if the year does exceptionally badly as a whole) and falling below that means you can resit but only once. Given the way the exams are weighted typical mark > grade translations go something like this: 3rds and they'll make you resit, 2.2s are just about possible provided you get the 70%, 2.1s weigh in at above 77%, and for a 1st you need close to 90%.

The problem is that everything I have revised, to get it firmly in my head, I need to read over it again, so despite my many long hours of copying across notes etc, I've got very little actual acquired knowledge to show for it, and hardly any time to finish the job. I started at the beginning of Easter, but it looks as though abandoning hopes for a high grade and just cramming would have been the best option.

Human Reproduction is the real worry, I missed a few of the lectures and as a result have not even read some of the material even once. Thus I'm going to have to tactically drop lecture blocks to get everything fitted in. On the plus side, most of the year suck at this module so the average mark will be lower, and they may feel compelled to lower the pass mark to below 70% which is probably my only hope of passing.

My DoS explained to me today that he didn't realise I was still strolling into 9am lectures on average 20 mins late, and said that if I'd been getting there on time, I'd have no problem's bagging a 1st. I just wish it was that damn easy!

Screw that though, this is about survival now... I've got a trip to Australia resting upon my performance, and with 62% of medics resitting at least one module last year, it's not good odds - if I have to resit, I'll have to cancel my trip.

My mistake this time round was to spend far too much time revising modules in depth rather than covering a broad enough range of material, with the result that two subjects, Human Repro and Neuro, are suffering badly. Fortunately Neuro is my best subject, so I should be able to keep it propped up with knowing the other stuff very well. Pharm is looking ok, I've tactically dropped half the pharmacokinetics block as it relates mostly to the practical stuff which can be revised in between exams next week. That leaves Path, which is this Saturday - with a huge does of luck, I'll be able to cover Cancer and Atherosclerosis modules in the next two days, leaving immunology to top up on on Friday.

Then it's just a question of finding time for those Human Reproduction modules... just give me one more week of revision pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaasssseee!

Scooped the BBC

Fri, 06 May 2005 17:42:10 GMT

Well we did it...

We stayed up broadcasting from 11pm until the bitter end of the Cambridge count at 05:45 for the CUR1350 Election 2005 coverage. We had a team in the studio, analysing UK results, and a team at the Guildhall interviewing candidates and updating the listeners on the progress of the Cambridge count.

The best bit though was the fact that the BBC only noticed Cambridge might change hands to the Lib Dems at about 05:00, and suddenly came rushing into the Guildhall frantically trying to set up their cameras. The result was that the only media outlet in the UK to broadcast that result actually live, was CUR1350! It was us who posted the result all over the newswires and us who who absolutely pissed all over BBC Radio Cambs with bitesize results updates. Furthermore, there was absolutely no sign of Q103, or Star107 who clearly weren't brave enough to try live coverage.

Btw, it was a 15% swing from Anne Campbell (Labour) to David Howarth (Lib Dem) with Liberal Democrats taking the seat: http://www.cur1350.co.uk

The result announcement and David Howarth's acceptance speech can be heard here:
http://www.cur1350.co.uk/audio/result.mp3

Mon, 02 May 2005 19:20:40 GMT

Look's like I'm not crackers after all:
http://www.cps.org.uk/pdf/pub/411-pr.pdf

CPS is a UK centre-right think tank.

Sat, 16 Apr 2005 14:50:50 GMT

So I've been keeping tabs on media coverage election 2005 to pick up tips for the CUR1350 Cambridge coverage on May 5th. For a very long time I've thought that there is a pro-Labour bias in the BBC and am not alone. Looking at the BBC's setup, with Andrew Marr a former Labour activist, finance dependent on the state, and the fact that they are not programme-regulated by Ofcom means that actually the BBC have very little interest in being impartial at all!

It appears to me that their more obvious tactic is to publish a set of articles which show Labour in a mildly positive light, and a few articles which give the Conservatives a mildly negative reputation, and throw them together online to help swing the undecided / stupid voter. When questioned by the Telegraph Beebwatch, with each article only carrying a mild bias, it is less difficult to claim impartiality. However the real skill of the BBC's pro-Labour bias is how they sit news items together. Take the 10pm news last night: firstly we hear a news story harping on about Labour's 'economy' record which was balanced with the Conservative's claim that the economy strength is simply off the back of a trend which began in 1992 (a view shared by economists), and Labour have simply rode on the back of this increase. Therefore that news item I would say was balanced.

However, the BBC then followed it up with a piece about how the house prices were the most favourable under Conservative PM Ted Heath. Seems a bit random to chuck in unrelated historical analysis? Well the actual article was indeed about the house prices in 1970, but tied this to lots of Conservative blunders. A similar piece has been published online:
"Ted Heath's Conservative government may have been blighted by petrol rationing and the three-day week, but home owners had never had it so good" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4446089.stm)
It then went on to talk about the later high interest rates under the Cons, and then how Tony Blair falls into second place with the house prices despite a strong economy.

In reality I think the real purpose of the article was to highlight all the historical unpopular Conservative blunders (what the fuck has petrol rationing got to do with house prices???) and remind the viewer about Labour's strong economy, all under the guise of house price analysis. By then putting it after a serious election article about the economy, the effect it had was to smear the Conservative's reputation and therefore counter argument in the first article, thus strongly propping up Labour's claim about the fact it had generated a strong economy.

Also note the failure of the BBC to mention house-price affecting Labour blunders such as the "Winter of Discontent" in the article.

This is the kind of pro-Labour subtlety I see in the BBC time and again. (Did you notice that a link to the Jeremy Paxman - Michael Howard interview from 1990s clip had made it onto the BBC News front page last week? I cannot for the life of me think of any sound reason why that needed to be put up there other than to smear Michael Howard.) Maybe I'm just insensitive to pro-Conservative bias in the BBC (if it exists) but what I will say is given that the BBC is funded by the Government, and that it has already been put up for financial review twice under Labour, the BBC are very much interested in pleasing the Labour party. Get them regulated by Ofcom! I wish the BBC would just open up and say "we are pro-Labour" so the many people who depend on the BBC as their main news source will begin to take BBC articles with a ~~pinch~~ tablespoon of salt.

So far, biased media include:
BBC (Lab)
Real Radio (Lab)
Smooth FM (Lab)
talkSPORT (Con)
Newspapers inc Telegraph (Con), Times (Con), Independent (Lib Dem), Guardian (Lab), Morning Star (Respect)

For unbiased Election coverage, I highly rate Sky News.

I also stumbled across this article on the Biased-BBC blogs submitted by an anonymous writer:

"and I am really quite surprised nobody has yet proffered it. It is as follows. In order to ensure that MG Rover remains fully funded in perpetuity, all the government need do is introduce a Motor Vehicle Licence of say £116 a year, which would be payable by everybody who owns any car. If you own more than one car, the MVL would be the same, and if your car is black or white you'd get a discount.

"There are about 20 million cars in the UK so this would bring in £2.3 billion a year for MG Rover, a national treasure that the world envies. Thanks to the unique way MGR would be funded, it would no longer need to worry about producing anything people actually want. It would rake in billions a year whether anyone bought a single car or not, and no matter how third-rate its output, we'd all be forced to pay for it regardless.

"To ensure full compliance, the MVL would be enforced by the MVLA, which would criminally prosecute anyone caught without an MVL and would send detector vans around to spy on people to make sure they don't own any cars. It would assume that anyone who says they don’t own a car at all is lying and it would harass them continually with aggressive letters and vague threats.

"At only £116 a year or barely 35p a day, nobody could reasonably claim they cannot afford this, and it goes without saying that everyone benefits from MG Rover's existence even if they have never used one of the company's products and never intend to.

"With an income stream on this scale, it wouldn't be long before MG Rover became a bloated bureaucracy of 60,000 penpushing lefties all sucking a living off the state teat - God bless them all."

What a genius!

Memememe

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 22:17:11 GMT

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Conservative

Your actual outcome:

Labour -18
	Conservative 50
Liberal Democrat -42
	UK Independence Party 21
Green -17

You should vote: Conservative

The Conservative Party is strongly against joining the Euro and against greater use of taxation to fund public services. The party broadly supported the Iraq war and backs greater policing and ID cards. The Tories are against increasing the minimum wage above the rate of inflation, and have committed to abolishing university tuition fees. They support 'virtual vouchers' for private education.

And seeing as the person who wrote the site is yet another flagrant left-winger (s)he's been selective over what to miss out (i.e. the positive points)...

The Tories also-
Will restore funding of the pension scheme, and are against Labour's retrospective application of pension laws: the new bill requires people who spent their lives working building up a pension, to stay on and work until 70, just to claim the pension that is rightly theirs at 65. This is in effect taking away 5 years of pension contributions from those people who have already paid, simply because Labour's financial mismanagement has led to a pensions black-hole. Medical papers state that life expectancy beyond 60 is lowered 3 years for every 5 worked, i.e. work until 70: life expectancy becomes lowered to 72- that's less years of pensions that Labour need to pay out. The system is wrong, those who have spent their lives working deserve the retirement they were promised, in full.

Support a tiered educational system, enabling pupils with special learning needs to attend state-funded schools optimised for their learning.
This includes schools for pupils with learning difficulties, but also just as importantly includes Grammar schools- intelligent students should be entitled to similar specialist education tailored to their ability. Labour's current anti-grammar school policy flushes a lot of potential away in the unoptimised comprehensive system, especially in families who are unable to afford private healthcare. The attitude that: intelligent students should suffer in a comprehensive system pitched at a lower educational level, just for the sake of equality; is simply politically correct madness- we're wasting Britain's future.
The "virtual vouchers" enable parents to send their children to private schools with state funding, and these vouchers are aimed at areas where former Grammar schools had to close and become private when Labour closed their state funding in 1997. Basically it's giving us back the Grammar School system which I deeply believe in from someone who has profound connections to both systems. Someone tell me what's wrong with these "vouchers" then? Private schools should also stay, they provide jobs, do not withdraw from the state funding and increase parent choice.

Will reduce police paperwork. Employing full-time administrators to complete police paperwork has been shown (Brixton trials) to liberate 80% of police time to be out in public or responding to emergency calls. Issuing receipts on stop-and-search is nonsense. Police should be allowed to stop and search if they have adequate suspicion, never mind the race of the subject - it's completely irrelevant and receipting wastes time and introduces aprehension. I feel throughly let down by the whole justice system, how come a teacher who fires a warning shot with an airpistol ends up inside for 6 months, yet a 12 year old local tyrant is released without sentence after shooting a 8 year old boy in the head with an airpistol? The justice system prays on those who are honest when they slip up, and just can't be bothered to chase and punish the real persistent offenders.

Will liberate NHS resources. By offering 50% of state funding for an NHS procedure to contribute to private healthcare, private healthcare becomes available to more people. Furthermore, private healthcare depletes less resources by attracting medical staff than that freed up by patients using private facilities as opposed to NHS facilities. It will also cost the state less, and cut waiting lists. The argument against is that those who would go private anyway, get a cheaper price- for the sake of freeing up beds, reducing NHS load at a greater magnitude than withdrawing resources, isn't this worth it?

Will protect Green-belt land. Labour claim that we are in need of more "social housing." 1 in 70,000 inner city council homes is currently uninhabited due to a requirement for essential repairs. Shouldn't we be spending money in restoring these properties before we start to hack away at the remaining countryside?

Will cut "red tape". Red tape = regulation and forms etc. This is costing businesses £X bn (I don't have the figure) a year. Anyhow, the regulation that a multinational single corporation must go through is exactly the same papers as the ones my village hall is required to fill in. Clearly in terms of percentage of turnover, this affects small businesses considerably more. Cut it, it's killing small business.

Do not believe that you lose your rights as soon as you top the £33,000 yearly income barrier. All I've seen from Labour's 'wealth redistribution' program is Middle Britain getting smashed by taxes which fuel income support for an increasing population of "NEETs" / to fund dead-end college courses which appear to be designed to generate positive qualifications figures and not much else. Maybe that's just Braintree for you, but when surveyed at Braintree college, 157/205 students said that "more than half" of their EMA money was spent on fags and booze. I believe that if someone works for their money and has invested their lifetime in a career to bring in a high income, they should damn well be entitled to keep a fair share of it. No-one should be left to suffer poverty, which is why tiered income tax is a good idea, however in today's system, those who earn seem to simply be paying for lazy-Britain's luxuries (i.e. fag's and booze). Pensioners now are the major age group under the poverty line (and for that see above).

Oppose Top-Up Fees. The argument that "since graduates get 80% of the benefit of their degree and the state gets 20% through their expertise, they shoudl pay for their education" is a nonsense. For a start, how can you compare grad finance with state benefit? Would you have any doctors if we all decided not to go to uni? Of course not, and the less doctors there were, the greater the value per doctor, thus it's nigh impossible to extrapolate a financial comparitive from it. Also, this argument negates the fact that with a grad compared to a non-grad (which is the comparison that's being made), the non-grad will have 3-6 years of earning which the grad won't, plus the non-grad will have no current tuition fee debt. In my eyes despite this being mathematically flawed, this is again Labour throwing talent down the toilet and the Tory system to scrap top-up fees is the best approach. However we still have a problem, which is university fees need to be paid for, they can't be expected to keep absorbing losses. Thus scrap "mickey-mouse degrees," invite businesses to fund appropriate vocational courses, and by all means, tax the whole state to subsidise the fees as the whole state will benefit overall.

Finally, if another moron mentions "tax cuts", please read the damn James report. The Conservatives have extrapolated spending to 2012, and by increasing taxes at a slower rate than Labour, will reduce the budget black-hole by around £20bn and adding with the lesser taxation, reduce spending by £35bn. Currently the Labour budget is losing us £39bn in loans per year from the Bank of England, and far too much money is being wasted (a healthy stock of examples is available by contacting Hall Mead and asking about the recent school building project flops).

There you go I went all political.

Yoinked from chronitis

Dysplasia

Tue, 05 Apr 2005 23:49:17 GMT

Today has not been a very good day:

I've requested an appointment to see a skin specialist regarding a facial mole that's recently become characteristically dysplastic. I've only just noticed the changes so fingers-crossed the worst case scenario is something in it's early stages. However thanks to the way you have to book an NHS appointment before transferring onto private healthcare schemes, I've got at least a week's wait until it's seen. Then there's a further wait for results if a biopsy is taken...

As a medical student I don't have the benefit of ignorance- I know what to look for and can spot things early but also know what the implications are of something like this, which is really not pleasant knowledge to have. As a result all this waiting is absolutely ripping me apart.

On the upside, looking at raw probabilities, 50 in 100,000 males of my age are affected and the mole is not in the characteristic place for melanoma at this age. I'm also not in the highest risk group as my skin tans (not burns), although I was fair-haired as a child and had quite a bit of sun exposure every year in Spain. Fortunately the 'cure' rate is above 95% for early stages (albeit with a nasty scar) so relatively speaking at worst case this is almost nothing.
However I know what I'm looking at and it doesn't look good... I hate being such a fucking pessimist!

I've tried to do some revision today but really can't concentrate. I seriously didn't realise that a simple health worry like this would reduce me to such an anxious mess. I can't believe that once again in my life, I've got some serious personal worry plus exam stress all at once! I guess that's the curse of learning medicine for you.

I'm just hoping that in a few weeks time or whenever it's all been checked, I can look back on this post to see how silly it was and wonder how I managed to get so damn anxious in the first place.
In summary: fuck....

In the wrong line of work?!!

Wed, 30 Mar 2005 22:40:42 GMT

I've just spent the past two hours listening to the latest DAB Digital Radio incarnation from GWR called "Chill". Bloody good station for GWR, just back to back Chill-out music with no DJs and no adverts :o)

But the best bit:

I've just looked online and found a playlist of tracks from the past two hours and discovered that 75% of the tracks played were on the playlist for the Chill-Out Mix show that aired on weekends on my old station. Why is this good? Well, The Chill-Out Mix was my creation, took me just half a year to persuade the MD to get it on the air, AND it started at the time I was Head of Music for Wingo... So, that means that the records for the Chill-out Mix (which were chosen by me) are the same ones that GWR are selecting for their new station! Clearly I knew what I was doing! I am smug :o)

Anyways at the moment, revision is killing me. I'm averaging about 4.5 hours per day at the moment, and am still trundling along a hopeless rate (2 lectures / day). I've got about 130 lectures to revise, and a good 50 or so practicals on top of that as well as the special options papers! Eek!

The problem is not that I'm too lazy to work, it's the fact that revision is just sooo damn boring! I hit a boredom threshold at about 90 minute intervals and have to take a break. The skill is getting the breaks to be the optimum length - too short and I'm not refreshed enough to go back to revision, too long and I've found doing other stuff too much fun (relatively).

So hopefully I'll get into the swing of things, and hit my 3 lectures per day target by the end of this week. Then all I need to do is keep this up till exams, and I'll hopefully have a fighting chance of slipping above the pass mark. Fail and I'll have to resit in the summer.

A holiday to Australia is at stake here, I really need to nail these exams first time round!

Oooh there goes DJ Sammy & Yanou - Heaven (Yanou's Candlelight mix) I do believe thats the track I opened the Chillout Mix with!

CUR1350 House Party

Sun, 20 Mar 2005 17:59:39 GMT

It was last night, and oh my god did it go down a storm!

We broadcast the second ever CUR1350 House Party, this time live from Charles' house. The House Party is an excuse for CUR1350 DJs to take over the decks and inflict their mix of music on Cambridge and the world!

For a start, since this was Charles hosting, it was not going to be some half-arsed attempt at a party, oh no, upon arriving this is what we saw:

Upon approaching his road, his big back-garden tree became immediately visible - it had been uplit bright green! The house brickwork was also uplit pink. I made my way round the back into the kitchen, yet more magenta uplights. Then into the living room... oh yes!

The whole room was illuminated by yet another giant magenta uplight, and there were two Wildblaze disco lights suspended from the ceiling. We had rigged a webcam up to take images every 30s and upload them online to the webcam (http://www.cur1350.co.uk). Then Charles reached behind the laptops pressed a button and... wooosh! yes there was a bloody smoke machine to play with as well!!!

Despite getting drunk really quickly, I played one of the best dance sets I've ever played, it might have had something to do with better equipment than in the studio or just the fact that I was getting totally carried away with it all. I'll post a tracklist once I get my CDs back, but notable tracks in the mix:

Reflekt - Need to Feel Loved (Thrillseekers remix)
Solex - Close to the Edge
Warrior - X (the most underrated trance record ever)
DuMonde - Never Look Back (Tiesto remix - older track, again unknown but bloody amazing)
Josh Gabriel - Alive (this is brilliant)
Perasma - Swing to Harmony (addictive)
Dogzilla - Your Eyes
Mark Sherry - Vengeance (deep, dark and damn dirty)

The set prompted a fair few e-mails, especially from a guy apparently called Mack at Princeton (US) asking what kind of music I was playing and where you can get hold of it.
We also took a load of photos of the night, which if anything, prove the ridiculous extent of lighting! I'll get them up asap.

All in all, an amazing night, a triumph for CUR1350 engineering, and probably the most extravagent house party to date!

You can hear the entire night again using our "Listen Again" feature on the left hand menu of CUR1350 online: CUR1350.

Kings...

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 23:28:56 GMT

God I hate this fucking college...

Stolen from Lowk...

Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:02:58 GMT

Which File Extension are You?

Nice...

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 15:35:44 GMT

I'll keep this one short-

Claire and I have broken up.

Eye of bloody buggering storm

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:28:05 GMT

Quick update here.

For the past 4 days I've had another one of those random Eye of The Storm moments where I've had to do NO work whatsoever. They are great, a chance to relax and I make sure I make the most of it by doing absolutely no work.

The problem is that they are preceeded and succeeded by excessive amounts of work (see, it's a good analogy!) If I were intelligent, I should have got rid of the last remaining shreds of work during the last 4 days, but instead I left them to mount up.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem, but my bag was temporarily 'borrowed' on Sunday by what I can only presume is an opportunistic thief hoping to find valuables (hope you enjoyed the lecture notes and dirty clothes :o) ) and this bag contained the lecture notes for an essay that was due in today! So I've got an extension on that until Wednesday.

Great! Also, Monday for some bizarre reason had only one lecture scheduled, so I had from 10am - 7pm to buy new stationary, do a pharm question and begin that essay... However, this is where things go wrong:

After spending £30 on stationary, I go back and have a barrage of e-mail from the radio station of people begging me to cover their roles because they are 'too busy'. Secondly, the internet at home has been cut off due to a virus so I spent an hour on the phone explaining to my sister how to disinfect the home network. Following that, my bag turned up!!! Placed back where it was nicked from, so thats £30 wasted...

Then I began the question. I set of down the wrong road, and being a typical arrogant arse, continued along it. I generated a set of mathmatical equations, solved them via graph, got to almost the right answer, and then realised that my graph was absolutely useless for the second half. On my second attempt, Fei suggested using the 'simple' graph from the handout (yes, the handout i.e. no brain required, just press 'copy') and guess what... it worked!!! So now I've wasted a good 8 hours fucking about with equations when I didn't need to, and still haven't got as far as writing up the question!!!

How did today become so inefficient? Where did the hours go? Irritated, frustrated and pissed-off with myself would be a good description.

I've now got a Radio Academy event to attend to, in order to brown-nose a load of commercial station Programme Controllers...

My room is a shit-heap and I have washing to do :o(

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 21:22:12 GMT

I've frequently whinged about the standards of treatment of medical students, and have repeatedly exposed regions of our course where the standards of teaching have fallen far below that of other colleges. As a result we have experienced some pretty poor exam results. To attempt to reverse this trend, College commissioned a subject review and asked the course organisers to fill in four paragraphs:

1. What Overall standards in medicine
2. Are we bad at selecting good students?
3. Are we bad at teaching students?
4. Is there a bad attitude amongst our students?

From a student perspective, I've found the following problems with Medicine at Kings:
- Lack of support and guidance with revision and time-management.
- Lack of guidance in essays and lack of useful feedback from work.
- Poor awareness of students timetables by supervisors (we tend to have unrealistic deadlines set, producing a lower quality of essays)
- Extensive timetabling leads to tiredness
- Teaching adjusted to follow Stereotype (we are expected to perform poorly therefore teaching standards are apathetic)
- Poor work ethos (socialise-first attitude of Kings puts peer-pressure on medics who do not have sufficient free hours)

However the supervisors have come up with a different reason why performance is so poor:

"2. Are we bad at selecting good students?
However hard one tries to teach students, they tend to run true to form over their three years. The key is to select good students in the first place. We are clearly failing to get the best. However, our own selection procedures are generally a good predictor of which students will do well. Those placed at the top of our selection list are almost always the students that get the best results. We have had a couple of exceptions to this in the past two years, amongst students for whom we put results in the BMAT exam above our own impressions. We will be more wary of these results in the future. Our view is that we are probably selecting the best students from our applicants, but we are not getting 8 applicants a year who are up to the highest standard in the university. To a large extent, we are selecting from a reduced pool pf talent because many schools (particularly independent schools) are reluctant to recommend King’s as they perceive us to be biased against them. We must encourage all schools to send us their best students.
We suggest that in future King’s only offers places to the students about whom we are absolutely confident, even if this means that we do not fill our 8 quota places."

Now I read this as:
"It's you the students who are the problem, unfortunately we were had no choice but to take you."

Apart from being profoundly insulting, it's also factually incorrect, I came from Colchester Royal Grammar School which was the top school for A levels at the time I applied, as well as being top for my year and and in the top 5 for the previous 5 years.

I personally think that paragraph 2 highlights just how unaware and out-of-touch our supervisors are with the course and its students and it serves as an illustration of how outward looking our course organisers are on directing the blame. Yes I'd agree that to a certain extent we could have revised more and practiced more questions, but I feel to put the blame squarely on us is outrageous. It's the supervisors job to ensure we're getting ourselves correctly prepared for exams, and they failed to do that.

To anyone who is reading this who is thinking of applying to King's for Medicine: apply elsewhere. Otherwise you'll get treated like shit.

Token Update

Tue, 01 Feb 2005 20:43:12 GMT

Just updating to releave the boredom of pharm questions. I'm having one of those days where I simply can't concentrate on anything and I think it's mental congestion due to writing too many essays on Monday. I'm in one of those ruts where I'm so used to having back-to-back work that if I get a free hour or so, I feel at a complete loose end!

What would be nice is if some of the brains in the Cambridge Engineering department could invent a device to allow the Theologians to donate some of their free hours to us medics...

Either that or one to stop Andy whinging about being bloody bored. Whats that? Oh, they have already?
Right I'm off to buy some duct tape...

Now there's a f*ing suprise!

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:45:49 GMT

What sign of the Zodiac am I?

Aquarius	86 %
Virgo	80 %
Capricorn	80 %
Scorpio	73 %
Sagittarius	66 %
Leo	66 %
Pisces	60 %
Gemini	60 %
Cancer	53 %
Libra	53 %
Taurus	33 %
Aries	33 %

Take the Zodiac test here!

What's that... oh I'm an Aquarius.. didn't see that one coming! Seriously, the Aquarius stereotype is the most accurate description of me I've ever read: http://www.chartplanet.com/html/Aquarius.html
And that's coming from someone who thinks Astrology is a load of bollocks...

FFS!

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 22:29:47 GMT

Well this is shaping up to be one fucking wonderful evening...

My revision is NOT going well - too much stuff, not enough time, too tired. In addition, my dad has just called from home. It appears that in my rush to get everything packed on Saturday (my parents wanted to leave by 6:30pm) I'd accidentally packed one too many mains power ribbon leads leaving them at home minus one for the printer. It's not too much of a problem as the laptops at home all have transformers powered by alike ribbon leads so one can be taken from there.

The big problem is that I've taken away my 3 USB patch leads for my printer, CD writer and external HDD. One was being used (without my knowledge) for the other printer at home and now my dad has a presentation due in tomorrow which requires printing, and ~~can't find~~ is blaming me for taking, the remaining USB lead. So I've got an extremely pissed off family 40 miles away that I can't do anything about bar guessing where they've put their lead, and stacks of revision with not enough hours to do it in. Great.

Does anyone else have a technologically-incompetent family where everything electronic that goes wrong is instantly your fault?

Right call me a poof if you will, but I'm going to make a cup of fruit tea and chill out for a bit.

Why, hello there!

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 18:21:38 GMT

Erm, not updated for a while. I can't really find a good reason to explain why, I've had the time (for once) but have really not done anything significant enough which warrants writing about... oh well!

This holiday has consisted of revision, radio work and sleep. So in reverse order:

Sleep:
At uni I average about 5-6 hours a night, yet need about 9 1/2 to remain 100% and as a result I end up becoming cumulatively more and more tired as the term progresses. So I'd like to think that I've been making up for it at home. On the first week of holidays I was managing 13 hours a night!!!

The problem is, after four weeks, I'm still sleeping for stupidly long periods of time. It's taken me a fair while to break out of the go-to-bed-at-2am, wake-up-at-1pm routine, but I'm still 'needing' 10 hours a night. Plus I tend to be waking up 3 or 4 times each night which just extends the whole sleep thing. All I want is to be able to go to bed at 12, and get up at 8... sounds simple doesn't it? I have enough trouble at uni! I'm still convinced someone must have drugged my coffee with valium.

Radio Work:
Thanks to me sleeping loads, after doing revision, there aren't many hours left in the day where I've got a quiet house (i.e. an empty one) to get some recording done. Kim (vocalist) has been over several times and I've got most of the soundbytes needed for new jingles. I've also re-written the show format for Club1350, and am tweaking two new features and possibly a new ~~studio monkey~~ co-presenter into Club1350 RHRN. Speaking of Club1350 RHRN, since timetables will be different next term, what is the optimum time in the week for us to schedule the show to suit you? Leave a comment with suitable times (includes you Steve!), and I'll try and find a decent slot.

Revision:
Ah yes, revision... I, like 95% of students in Cambridge underestimated how much there is to do, and how long it all takes. So far I'm deep into the Pathology course but have barely touched Pharm and Neuro. It all seems sooo much simpler when you read it over carefully, which I vow to do as a new-term resolution each time, but of course in medicine thats the task which requires the one thing they forget to give you: time!

So at the moment I've got an essay and some more questions to complete, plus 2 1/4s worth of subjects to revise, and just a week to do it in prior to the mocks next Tues. Arrghh! At the current rate of 4 hours revision/day before I hit my insanity threshold, there's no way I'll get it all done in time! I'm just going to bank on the other medic's being lazier than me and while I'm at it I'm going to go out and win the lottery...

This village is becoming rather dull! Not having a car / form of transport is beginning to drive me insane, and my 'friends' are so wrapped-up in smoking pot that they virtually resemble plants. It seems that every form of entertainment is too far outside a student budget to do reguarly and more to the point, with a load of friends who spend their entire months wages on resin - there's not many people to go with either! I'm actually looking forward to going back to Cambridge...

That said this week's had highlights: Claire came over on Friday :o) We decided to go out for a meal with my parents, which I thought was rather brave of Claire! (Even braver was her asking my parents about property... luckily they behaved themselves) It was a lovely meal despite me accidentally eating a wine glass (lifes_a_dream's entry will explain). We also popped over the pub for a few drinks to round of the night. On Saturday I took Claire round Colchester - it was nice to spend some time together without being pressured for time, and despite the fact that we were technically 'shopping' I really enjoyed it! Claire also tried on one of those "pregnancy tops" to prove her point... you looked lovely dear :-P!

Why is it that LiveJournal is such an effective way of wasting time whilst giving you the feeling that you've achieved something? I wonder what their secret is! - Back to revision...

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Sat, 25 Dec 2004 17:44:14 GMT

Token update to let you all know I'm still alive!

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Just had Christmas dinner, with both goose and turkey which made a very nice change. My family are now arguing over Christmas TV (I must admit it's a rather shite this year) and contemplating playing Articulate despite the lack of the board game itself :S...

Claire's in Scotland for xmas :o( but by the sounds of things she's beginning to enjoy being stuck in a windy middle of nowhere! (They apparently have had snow)

So far today I've received my very own wireless laptop card (using it now to write this entry), a back up hard drive, a lot of chocolate and suprisingly a brand new Motorola phone!

Last night was supposed to be a night in the pub, however my friends from the village (no, not Royston Vasey, although I'm starting to see the resemblence) decided they'd rather sit indoors and smoke all evening instead..... they do this EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR - tossers. So instead Jimmy Carr, Bo Selecta and a Baileys kept me company for xmas eve evening. I've got no plans to visit my friends again this holiday...

So once again Merry Christmas everybody, I'm probs going to ring round a few friends soon, and possibly organise the big New Years Eve outing!