First Semester Finally Over

Yeeehaw! After months and months of hard brain labor, I finally enter the state of serenity, peace, and laziness: HOLIDAY! It's been too long and I don't know what will happen if we keep on going with all those medical stuffs. As happy as I am for this holiday, I still freaked out when they said that it'll be over on January 27, right after Chinese New Year. Hey, that's not fair! The guys in Depok got their breaks much earlier and they won't come back to school until Feb 2.

Anyway, the First Aid module's been half-great, half-blurgh. The lectures were quite interesting and the skills training was great, bar some sessions with annoying tutors. We pounced on a plastic man for CPR, put an unlucky friend in splints, and wrapped each other in arm slings. During the module, we also got the chance to visit the Emergency Room and ICU. There were all sorts of people (and injuries) in the ER, although we didn't see any jaw-dropping, eye-popping patient. The ICU was, well, an ICU. There was a row of beds surrounded by a storeroom full of monitors and devices, with medusa-like cables and lines connected to the patient. The room was depressingly noisy with a variety of beeps and scary warning tones. From then on, I swear I don't wanna be in the ICU as the patient. Seriously.

Like every other module, First Aid had to end with a set of exams. Along with the staple MCQ and Essay exams, I had to go through an OSCE, famously called "ujian teng-teng" for its alarm to notify stressed students that time's up. Here's how my first OSCE went. There were 7 skills station for various stuffs we learned in two weeks, and students were given 5 minutes to finish the task in each station, signaled by the teng-teng. (Well, a buzzer was used instead of a bell, but as a tribute for the good ol' times...let's use teng-teng) I wouldn't say that I messed up my OSCE, but I think I can't get the highest score with my performance. I was horribly nervous, while the examiner doctors didn't help at all. My explanations bordered on rambling, and I suspect that I accidentally skipped some steps. Aaargh, now I can only wait until the score pops out in SIAK-NG.

By the way, I'm quite satisfied with my current scores. I surprisingly trumped Research with an A! I couldn't believe it at first; I was thinking like "what the what....!" and I pressed the Refresh button repeatedly to make sure that my eyes weren't mistaken. When the score finally sank in, I purged my disbelief and literally screamed cries of extreme joy. That's how terrible Research was.