Finale..the final countdown

The title really tells all. And whether you're on the same wavelength (maybe courselength) as me, or you've been subjected to my high-emotion-run-wild postings, you will no doubt understand what I'm talking about. For for those clueless earthlings, mommy shall spell it out again: I had my long awaited med entrance interview yesterday, about 22 hours ago. And before you all shoot me the most cliche question everyone has been asking me, let me take you on a tour of the hours leading up to the meet-and-greet-your-interviewers time.

Since getting my interview letter about two weeks ago, I lived every day wondering how lucky I was to be given this golden opportunity. I was always stoked, excited, and on cloud nine. If you remember, my UMAT results were so poor beyond hope. The last hope I had to cling on to was the fact that my GPA was a near prefect. Now listen guys, I'm not trying to brag about it. The fact that I virtually flunked UMAT was really debilitating, and being the person who I am, I really needed a final straw of hope, my grades were my silver lining. But yes, the letter came and that meant I could do the final touches to my long preparation.

From Maori health, the Treaty of Waitangi, NZ health system, waiting lists to abortion, euthanasia, and Jehovah's witness, I went the extra mile. Scouring information on the net was hectic. There was just so much, too much to know. The nagging feeling I had was, Should I play safe, know all, or just concentrate on important things and formulate my answers arond those instead? I stuck to the latter one. Then there was the whole 'Self analysis' stage. This interview, I knew, was to see who you would be as a doctor. So inevitably you had to know your strengths, weaknesses, reasons why, inspirations, fears, your backup plan and so on and so on.

Then came the eve of the interview. This was when my wild twin came out to play. For those who don't know, I'm a Gemini and like anyone else, have two sides. One that is the serious, studious one. One, the fun loving, insane, highly excited one. I laughed easily and talked in a enthusiastic rush. Maybe it was me trying to mask any nervousness I had. But at that point, all I could concentrate on was to give a kick-ass interview and not even on the consequences after. At work, I got some words of encouragement from my workmates and all of them had their fingers (and apparently some toes) crossed.

Went to Grafton about an hour early. Grafton campus is where med school is located. It's about a 15 min walk from the city campus. And as always, I loved the walk there. We had to walk to our medsci labs all the time and it was just a great, relaxing walk. The whole way I was thinking, 'Hell I can do this everyday man.' Then came the realisation that I might never do it again. Shudder. As mentioned before, Danielle, Aajuli and I had the same interview time. Little did we know that the other two (they interview 5 at the same time, diff rooms) would all be familiar faces. It was a great pre-interview session that we had. Chatting and catching up. A lot of good-luck hugs and All-the-best words. We also got a briefing from our escorts, third year med students, basically on the interview and how we should attend Fresher's Camp next year. Nice!

I was escorted to my interview room. My escort knocked on the door and my two interviewers came to greet me. My heart kinda sank when I saw that they were people I didn't know. Some of my friends who had interviews earlier on in the week got a few familiar faces- some of our first year lecturers that is. Rory got Rod Jackson, Gunjan got Kim Dirks, Febe got Roger Booth and apparently a couple of years back, some got the privilege to be interviewed by Colin Quilter! I would've been star strucked! But anyways, back to mine. One introduced himself as someone.. 'Richard Frith', a neuro something, and the other one I don't know. Mind you, at this point, I was trying to recollect my thoughts and remain calm. So really the basic introduction just went zooming past. They weren't overly friendly but not too daunting as well. The Richard guy had very kind blue eyes, hey Yosi, he reminded me of Richard Faull! Prof Faull was our neurology lecturer. I had to do a double take at his name tag!

They started off with the most cliche question: 'Why do you want to be a doctor?' And everything followed on from there. I have to say the interview went well. I think I came across as mature, knowlegable and optimistic. One interviewer asked questions that were more personal like those that showed what type of person I was and the other basically specialised in the doctor-health issues kinda questions. I was asked to tell what I did best, what I did not so well and how I coped with it. I was asked about my community service at Red Cross. And what I realised was once you made a statement, you have to follow up on it. They want you to elaborate or see how valid it is. My questions weren't overly tricky. But we did touch on some random but not irrelevant things like government funding, the whole rugby stadium funding, politics, Nationals. Also, I got a lot of specific medical situations. One was like what would I do if a more senior, respected doctor was going to do a surgical procedure that I know is wrong. And another was what was the moral behind the story if say an oncologist has a lot of patients dying? I would say the type of questions asked of me allowed me to show my personality and heath issues. We talked a bit on health inequalities and what would I do to prevent them.

I came out not with a beaming smile on my face. But was just glad and relieved it was all over. I was pleased with my performance. However, later on in the day, I had second thoughts. I started thinking maybe I didn't do so well after all. Although I did accentuate my understanding side, I didn't really show a commitment to being a doctor. We went into stem cell research and they asked me why not research as a career. And I said I won't deny that I might venture out later on, but not now. And whether have I talked to anyone about a career in medicine, I said no. And there were also some instances I crapped a whole lot. Sometimes I kinda went blank and didn't even know what was I saying, let alone the interviewers. Dire. And when they gave me the final chance at the end to add anything more, I didn't have anything to say. Plain stupidity. Damn.

So I know I won't get an 'Exceptional' interview. People who do get into med no matter what. Guess I have to rely on my final ranking. I just hope that out of the 100 so places, there will be a place for me. But if not, I know I have other things to fall back on. Hoping for the best. Not that prepared for the worst.

Results out next Thursday.