FRESH START:Exams are upon us in The Royal College of Surgeons. We have had one every Friday for the past three weeks and this continues until December 12th. It's exhausting, even for a three-time Leaving Cert champ.

We kicked off our exam marathon with something called "card-signing". This is the name given to our anatomy exams, in which 15 or so students stand around a cadaver for an intense question and answer session. Each student gets approximately five minutes of questioning, at the end of which they are pronounced to have achieved an 'A', a 'B' or a 'C'. (There's no such thing as a 'D' in the world of medicine.)

Success depends on knowledge, but also on confidence. I was getting quite obsessed with the grade-letters before a second-year medical student, Karim, advised me to focus more on the "learning experience" of it all.

Since taking this advice on board, I'm finding the process rather more enjoyable. So, I bought myself several anatomical posters, and hung them in my shower. When studying medicine; every moment is a possible study opportunity. Even between lectures or at lunchtime, I can often be seen running home or to the library to fit in some more study, and I'm not alone in this unfortunate habit. Last week I found myself studying at home for more than double the hours of lectures I had that week. And there can be no resting on one's laurels, because no matter how hard you have been working, if you stop to breathe at all, you fall behind.

Despite all this, I appreciate the value of taking time off. We all know what becomes of those who engage in all work and no play. I try to work overtime during the week so that I can relax for most of the weekend, and fit in my part-time job, and I must say that time away from the books feels so much better when you know you've earned it. My friends are so wonderful to relax with, as we're all going through the same things, and we form such a support network for each other. When one of us is feeling down or stressed, the others all rally around to make them feel better. It must be the doctorly instinct to help people. I really thought that I had made the best friends of my life in boarding school, but I'm shocked that I already have such close college friends.

I get the sense that these fantastic people will remain my friends for the rest of my life, no matter how geographically far apart we are in the future.

Before I made it to medical school, I was told by doctor relatives and friends that the most difficult aspect on the road to becoming a doctor was just getting into medicine, but I'm finding this, so far, to be a fallacy. The Leaving Cert seems so easy in comparison to the exams I face now. As one of my friends put it so accurately: "It's not that the work we do is so terribly difficult to comprehend, it's simply the sheer volume of knowledge that we're expected to learn that makes it so challenging."

So, after almost two months of medicine, I think I'm finally getting used to it. The early mornings, the bizarre cadaver sessions, the difficult lectures, the extensive daily study sessions; they just don't faze me anymore. I'm just about managing to keep up with the hectic pace, and to be honest, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I can't imagine doing anything else, and I've never regretted my last-minute switch from dentistry to medicine. Standing under the shower on a cold dark Tuesday morning, looking at the layout of the lower intestine, I'm livin' the dream.