the perils of

I realize that in my more than 16 years (!!!) of blogging, an estimated 90% of my motivation to write comes from procrastinating another piece of work. Today, a Saturday, I woke up feeling extra anxious over having to accomplish two reports due Monday morning, plus having to clean up the condo and get a bunch of other domestic tasks done, but my brain really just said no no no we absolutely must prioritize the most important task of all: updating our blog. After all, we cannot keep our dear readers waiting another moment longer! Oral Exam The past 5 months of residency so far have felt like they were all building up to one moment: our first oral exam. For Psychiatry residents, the oral exam means interviewing and diagnosing a real patient in front of a panel of consultants, and it happens twice a year, the first in May and the second in October. If you get a high enough score from three consultants, you can be exempted from having to take the second exam. It's such a huge event tha...

I just finished my final two weeks of pre-residency at PGH, or the Philippine General Hospital. Along with my 8 batchmates in residency, we spent the past two weeks figuring out the work commute, preparing and giving lectures to each other, shadowing the more senior residents, seeing patients at the Outpatient Department (OPD) and Emergency Room (ER), and of course, practicing for the first years' Christmas party dance.  Yep, that’s me. You're probably wondering how I got here. Well it all started when…   1. Storm between calms The day immediately before  returning to PGH was November 30, the day of the Baha sa Luneta 2.0 protests. We had a 3,000-strong contingent, and more people would have showed up if not for the police. Having learned from their mistakes during the September 21 rally, the police showed up in full force. They messed up the program and caused immense delays. Still, the program pushed on. There was singing, dancing, and a few speeches. At around 10 AM, ...

After working in public health for most of my professional life - first as a Doctor to the Barrio, then in the DOH Central Office, then as a researcher - I've decided it's time to enter residency. Scrubs these days are expensive AF. Did not buy. For the uninitiated, residency is that special time in every specialist doctor's life where you work and train in a hospital for 3 to 5 years to become a specialist in something - in my case, Psychiatry. For the initiated, this is 3 to 5 years of being an overworked, underpaid zombie.  My friends and family know I've agonized about this decision for a long time now. I already applied to a Psychiatry program last year, but decided not to push through to stay in the DOH. Last December I decided to quit DOH anyway and take what eventually became a "slow year."  I was lucky enough to be offered a few research and consulting gigs, and to some extent, I was able to do things on my own terms. For the first time ever I was 100...