On Tuesday I sat for my Nutrition Care Process and Nutrition Education and Counselling papers- it was a bit stressful but I realised how serious I need to be if I plan to go deeper into healthcare.
I was pretty confident for this exam, but I was still unsure of whether I'd survive the paper - after what I saw in pharmacology, I didn't want to take any chances.
I'll rate it 8/10 because a lot of the things I revised for showed up. The multiple choice and short answer questions were the easiest parts for me. The long answer section just made me regret how much ink I'd have to use. I wrote a lot.
What I wish I had done while studying was to find case studies and to give better examples of things like PES and nutrtion interventions. I also wished that I had used questions to revise for the exam. A lot of past paper questions my classmates reviewed showed up.
My motivation for the next exam was that I was familiar with a lot of things taught in the module. I was also motivated since I did a lot of assignments for the class.
Nutrition Education and Counselling:
That was a lot of guesswork! I had no idea how complex the questions would be, but I was lucky since I had studied for it and some questions from my mid semester exams were repeated. I rate it 7/10. This was because some of the questions were structured weirdly and they were hard to interpret.
What I wish I had done while studying was to use case studies and real-life examples, I also wish I had used my mid-semester exam papers to revise because some questions were repeated.
Wednesday, 24th July 2024.
I just want my exams to end already. I had a really bad headache, and it just made my anxiety worse. This semester has just shown me how serious I need to be if I want to become a competent healthcare professional. Enough ranting, anyway, today I did my Diet Therapy II and Nutrition in the Lifecourse exams. They drained me.
I've never been humbled by such questions before! It was a very hard paper and it didn't help that I had a headache. Regardless, I endured it and did my best to answer every question. I'll rate the paper 6/10 because the questions were vague as heck. The only part I liked was the MCQs, and that's only 20 marks. The other 80 were in the other sections. A lot of the questions asked about diets for different diseases, but how to answer the questions was the problem. It was hard but, I hope I'll get the marks either way.
What I wish I had done while studying was to use case studies as much as possible. Case studies would have helped me understand how to answer the questions.
My motivation for the next paper was one thing and one thing only: I worked my ass off for every Lifecourse class. I made short notes, participated in group discussions, and did a lot of oral presentations.
Nutrition in the Lifecourse:
It was fair, so I'll give it a 7/10. My only problem was that the paper covered Maternal and Child Health, and the professor said it wouldn't be part of the exam 🤡
So, while I was studying, I skipped everything that involved maternal and child health, yet it was a 10 mark essay question 😔
What I wish I had done while studying was to look at the current trends- a lot of questions asking about relatively new/foreign concepts showed up and I really had to crank my brain to think up of answers.
All in all, this exam period had been so stressful that I've started to get headaches. I didn't post yesterday because of how exhausted I was and how humbling these exams have been. It made me question the 1 and a half years I've spent in medical college. It doesn't help with the state of my mental health at the moment either- my current escape had been talking with my partner and sleeping. My only hope is that my illness doesn't make me miss an exam like last time. I went through a lot with having to write a letter of request and telling the lecturers in charge about my chronic pain.
Anyway, I have Nutrition Interventions in HIV and AIDS and Research Methods tomorrow. I don't think I have the capacity to read for anything, so I'll just sleep early tonight. I passed the mid series exams for these two so I won't have a problem with getting the pass mark for these modules.
I hope anything reading this has a great day/night, and if you have exams- I wish you all the best.
