post exam blues
2:08 am
Scratch that, mid exam blues.
Still hv my osce to do next week. Took a break today and will be getting on the study bandwagon again tomorrow.
The exams? Shit.
Careless mistakes, stupid mistakes, just plain wtf questions...
It feels like an elephant is just sitting on my chest atm.
All those weeks studying and i feel i just didnt put in enough effort. All my friends seem to be doing so much better.
I slacked a lot and now i'm just paying the price for it.
Sighhh
I cant go back to the past but i guess i shold just look forward and concentrate on the next exam.
Man... This year really made me want to just jump in front of a bus multiple times.
Really really bad year
a letter of complaint
1:26 am
I understand that the UKBA is under a lot of pressure this year due to the Olympics and the rush of applications made before the immigration changes that took place in April. However, I am appalled at how vague and sketchy things work in your office.
I applied for a TOC due to a stolen passport in April. There were no processing times available for TOC applications. According to your website, 75% of other visa application would be solved within 4 weeks. With that information, I went ahead to submit my application as a postal application although I needed to travel in July. I thought my case would be fairly straight forward as it is just for replacing a stolen visa and shouldn't take more than a week. I am a medical student, I've been here since 2010, I don't work so there is no way I can be breaking the 20 hour work limit law and my initial visa application was processed extremely fast, where I received my passport and my visa within a week, showing that my case is straight forward. No dependants with me, my bank record would show I'm always in credit and I would have a clean criminal record, having cleared a CRB check done by the medical school.
After 4 weeks and still no news, I called up the UKBA and after being on hold for 30 mins, a lady answered my call who was quite sympathetic to my situation. She said the statistic of 75% completion within 4 weeks is after doing the biometrics and when I called, my case wasn't even on the system. I wanted to withdraw my application then but my biometric letter arrived when I made up my mind and I thought there should be time for the passport to arrive.
It has been 3 weeks now and I called the UKBA again. This time, the woman I spoke to gave me vague answers about how they don't have any information available to them and when I asked her about the 75% of cases being completed within 4 weeks, she dismissed it and said all postal applications would take between 4 to 14 weeks. She also said that case workers now no longer entertain any request for applications to be expedited by any means.
So, my major complains are:
1) How can replacing a stolen visa take so long? Is there no separate case workers for TOC applications or do all visa applications just get lumped into one and is dealt with as a first come first serve basis?
2) Why is it that people answering the phones keep giving different figures? Processing times may mean nothing to them but mean everything to us and influences our decisions. I hope better training is given to these people so at least they can give coherent answers.
3) Why is the application process so vague? Nothing is said about what is actually done to your application once it is received. Does it involve looking at criminal/travelling records? What other checks are done? What happens after the checks are done? How long does each step take? Just a simple explanation would be more reassuring than not knowing at all. It's like we've all sent our passports to the deep abyss where you just have to wait patiently without any official form of identification as a foreigner in the UK and be at the mercy of the case workers when they would like to send our passports back.
4) No way of expediting applications at all? You got to be kidding me. There's a long list of reasons listed on the UKBA website on grounds for expediting applications if you search hard enough. Get your workers to get the facts right.
4) I don't understand this one at all. Why is it the visa application centres overseas are more efficient (and cheaper?) than the ones in the UK? Is it because the workers here just get paid more?
sook
DR. Computer, M.D.
2:44 am
I think it's entirely possible for a computer with AI to be a doctor.
Seriously... medical students are not smart. Well at least that's what I think. Some of course are genuinely smart but to pass the exams, all you need is a gigantic memory capacity and some simple application skills.
A computer can have boundless memory capacity.
Computers can be taught to apply concepts into practice.
Other than that, most good doctors become good with years of experience. They know what they are dealing with when the patient tells them their story and they examine.
All these are all pattern recognition. Patient with long standing cough, night sweats, weight loss, contact with developing country= TB! the combination of these factors points to TB.
If you change one factor, let say cut off developing country contact and exchange with a long standing smoking history= LUNG CANCER.
seriously... if a program can be created to input all these parameters and the computer can be intelligent enough to learn as it goes along as well (learning new patterns, learning to put them into practice, learning which cases are just extremely rare) it can beat any doctor out there. Best of all... computers don't really have an expiry date. Doctors just become better as they become more experienced. Imagine that... a computer with 50 years of clinical experience and a never ending memory.... should be pretty awesome in clinical medicine.
with full body imaging etc as well... the computer can just take that into account and produce a bloody diagnosis.
edit: case in point:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/computers-beat-doctors-at-diagnosing-child-illnesses-1949596.html
soon... we'll all be jobless :( maybe i can be the computer's technician. lol
Seriously... medical students are not smart. Well at least that's what I think. Some of course are genuinely smart but to pass the exams, all you need is a gigantic memory capacity and some simple application skills.
A computer can have boundless memory capacity.
Computers can be taught to apply concepts into practice.
Other than that, most good doctors become good with years of experience. They know what they are dealing with when the patient tells them their story and they examine.
All these are all pattern recognition. Patient with long standing cough, night sweats, weight loss, contact with developing country= TB! the combination of these factors points to TB.
If you change one factor, let say cut off developing country contact and exchange with a long standing smoking history= LUNG CANCER.
seriously... if a program can be created to input all these parameters and the computer can be intelligent enough to learn as it goes along as well (learning new patterns, learning to put them into practice, learning which cases are just extremely rare) it can beat any doctor out there. Best of all... computers don't really have an expiry date. Doctors just become better as they become more experienced. Imagine that... a computer with 50 years of clinical experience and a never ending memory.... should be pretty awesome in clinical medicine.
with full body imaging etc as well... the computer can just take that into account and produce a bloody diagnosis.
edit: case in point:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/computers-beat-doctors-at-diagnosing-child-illnesses-1949596.html
soon... we'll all be jobless :( maybe i can be the computer's technician. lol
stupid stupid stupid
8:55 pm
asthma classification is utterly dumb.
the people who created it probably thought the classification of mild, moderate and severe is too damn easy to remember. instead, mild asthma is moderate, moderate is severe, severe is LIFE THREATENING.
i think healthcare professionals would understand severe is severe without them having to slap it in our face and label it as life threatening.
we geddit. severe asthma kills.
yeesh.
the people who created it probably thought the classification of mild, moderate and severe is too damn easy to remember. instead, mild asthma is moderate, moderate is severe, severe is LIFE THREATENING.
i think healthcare professionals would understand severe is severe without them having to slap it in our face and label it as life threatening.
we geddit. severe asthma kills.
yeesh.
it doesn't mean anything
12:57 am
it's not a question of "will it happen". it's a question of when.
- a lecturer
i'm talking about blood on our hands. a doctor's hand.
mistakes will be made when we are placed in hospitals. not intentionally, just a combination of stress, environmental factors (busy ward, unhelpful seniors, clueless nurses), hunger, anxiousness, sleepiness, etc
it's shown that hospital death rates do increase in August, the month where medical students become junior doctors.
life sucks
- a lecturer
i'm talking about blood on our hands. a doctor's hand.
mistakes will be made when we are placed in hospitals. not intentionally, just a combination of stress, environmental factors (busy ward, unhelpful seniors, clueless nurses), hunger, anxiousness, sleepiness, etc
it's shown that hospital death rates do increase in August, the month where medical students become junior doctors.
life sucks
hate weird qws
2:27 pm
only in anaesthetics i get dumbfounded by questions where the answer should be obvious.
reminds me of the time in IMU where majority of the students couldn't answer "what is stress?" . ironically, i think all of us felt like pulling our hairs when we saw that qw.
fastforward 2 years and again i'm encountering qws like this.
what is pain? (ARGHGHGHGHGHG.. fav qw of the anaesthetist)
what is anaesthesia?
what is the importance of airway assessment? (duh... so we can get adequate o2???????? but i can bet the answer would be more "medical sounding")
why treat pain?
the effects of heart disease during anaesthesia. ugh. i only could muster up a feeble answer of "reduced cardiac function"
i feel these questions are like asking why is the sky blue? why do we breath oxygen? why do we have fingers? what is wind? what is space?
maybe i'm just dumb.
back to mind-numbing reading
reminds me of the time in IMU where majority of the students couldn't answer "what is stress?" . ironically, i think all of us felt like pulling our hairs when we saw that qw.
fastforward 2 years and again i'm encountering qws like this.
what is pain? (ARGHGHGHGHGHG.. fav qw of the anaesthetist)
what is anaesthesia?
what is the importance of airway assessment? (duh... so we can get adequate o2???????? but i can bet the answer would be more "medical sounding")
why treat pain?
the effects of heart disease during anaesthesia. ugh. i only could muster up a feeble answer of "reduced cardiac function"
i feel these questions are like asking why is the sky blue? why do we breath oxygen? why do we have fingers? what is wind? what is space?
maybe i'm just dumb.
back to mind-numbing reading
