Back writing.
The Easter break has made my life a bit easier. There is less existentialist thinking and reflecting on incompetence. I think being away from school actually helps.It’s not so much that i take a break from osteopathy, far from it, it’s just a a reflective break on the amounts of learning and processing we have had to do over the last few months and how little time we are given to do that.
Michel de Montaigne kindly speaks of a link between learning and digestion, prompting me to compare our state to perpetual diarrhoea. Har.
I’m told this will be worse in the second year and I can only hope that I will feel suffieciently supported in my endeavour.
I have attended clinic a few times now so I feel more encouraged to apply the little knowledge I have and to synthesise and combine techniques with patient care and to be present.
It is rather exciting if I may say so.
I spent a few days answering anatomical questions which suited my approach to memory and rote learning better. I’m rising above when I have to ‘figure things out’ or investigate how something is done. Present me with a puzzle or a construction and i’m very happy to play with it and take it apart and put it back together again.
I hope that I can apply this knowledge of my own workings with more use in the exams. I know I need a good foundation of knowledge and that floundering and improvising is not always the order of the day, but it is my more creative side that can come in useful sometimes and it certainly will.
One of the strangely impressive thing happening in my visits to clinic was how the students admitted to not knowing something and how the tutors modified their questions and encouraged. The atmosphere was not of fear but of being able to show something.
I’m hoping to be able to employ some of this calm in my own upcoming exams so that I may look at them less like the spanish inquisition but a more hopeful arrangement.
It might just work .
I’ll definitely have to learn to play to my strengths. Apparently I come across as argumentative but I think that is more to do with the pressure I put on myself. I find that being able even to reflect and think about my behaviour and responses is a wonderful exercise. Being able to practice with other students and geeking out over medical conditions and antomical realities is useful and it helps reminding me why I’m here and bothered to learn.
Brainium & Cranium 