A New Year’s Day On Call

I did it.

Exactly a year after I started working, I did one of probably the most difficult shifts an intern can get: New Year’s Day on the surgical service.

One Year On

Exactly one year ago, I started Internship. Hard to believe that the terrifying days just kept coming, until one day they weren’t so terrifying anymore.

Today marks the beginning of my second year of Internship, as the new interns arrive. I am excited for them, mostly. I also have quite a few friends coming!

I’ll be on call today on the surgical service. I anticipate a busy busy 24 hours; because with great celebration comes great trauma, unfortunately.

One year from now, if all goes well, I’ll be starting my community service year – in a different province, different hospital.

I don’t really know what to expect for the year ahead. To be honest, I haven’t even had time to make goals or plans. But I trust it will be a year of great learning and experiencing.

What a time to practise medicine, indeed.

Self-Care Is Hard

As my first year as an adult (sort-of maybe I guess?) draws to an end, I find myself reflecting a lot on what has happened. Incoming interns ask for advice and I wanted to write a really cool and inspirational post but I find myself not knowing what to say. Almost as if I haven’t learned enough to offer advice.

6th Annual End of Year Bookish Survey

Once again I’m linking up with Jamie at Perpetual Page Turner for her awesome End Of Year book survey! Where book titles are hypelinked, they link to my reviews 🙂

Number Of Books You Read: 61!

Number of Re-Reads: I don’t think I re-read any books this year. I’m not so big into that.

Genre You Read The Most From: Do you guys keep painstaking record of this? Because I don’t. But just by scanning through my GoodReads I think it’s contemporary. Probably a mix of YA and adult. Closely followed by non-fiction.

Working the Festive Season

Christmas and New Year’s is such a fun time in South Africa. It’s the middle of Summer. The weather is gorgeous, perfect for swimming and braaing, spending time with family, and reading.

It’s my first festive season of working full-time.

Internship: Day 1

This morning, when most of the world was nursing their hangovers, I woke up to go to my first day of work. It’s a miracle I made it to the hospital safely, the way that I was quivering in my boots.

For the rest of my life, 1 January will be my anniversary of entering the working world. Some first-year interns at other hospitals are really unfortunate and are on call on their very first day, but at my hospital the second year interns are very kindly doing today’s calls – and this weekend’s, so that we can get settled in. What a nice way to start.

My Year in Review: 50 Questions to Reflect, Appreciate and Get Excited for 2015

I hope everyone had a good Christmas! I had a fantastic time with family and friends and was so busy that I didn’t even start the computer once. I found these questions at Into Mind by Anuschka and I thought they made for some great reflections. I was pretty disappointed in myself for struggling to answer some of them, and I want to keep these questions in mind this year to aim for a more mindful approach to life. Feel free to answer them too and let me know!

5th Annual End of Year Book Survey!

It’s time for another end of year book survey with Jamie from The Perpetual Page Turner! I read more than I thought I would be able to get away with. Here’s a bit of a roundup of the year!

Where titles are hyper-linked, the redirect to my reviews.

Number Of Books You Read: 59 (re-reads not included)
Number of Re-Reads: 3
Genre You Read The Most From: Contemporary (both YA and Adult)

Learning to Adult

I guess I’m going from deep end to deeper-end.

I spent some time at SARS (South African Revenue Services) yesterday registering as a tax payer (only to learn that I actually am already registered). I didn’t wait in line too long because tax season just ended but it was still pretty much a bee-hive.

I walked to the receptionist, put down my documents and started saying, “I would like to register…” but then, because you know, I wouldn’t really LIKE to, but it’s the right thing to do, so I started again, “I am here to register as a tax payer.”

Top Ten Books I Read in 2014

With TTT and The Broke and the Bookish this week we do a roundup of our favourite reads of the year. Obviously this is really hard, but I’ll try. The links are to my reviews, unless I haven’t written a review, in which case they refer to the GoodReads page.

Three Daughters by Consuelo Saah Baehr – It pushed all the right buttons. I loved it, and it might be the most unexpected favourite of my entire year.