Day 16: Queen Aribike Toyin #MyMBBSJourney

Hi my name is Oluwatoyin O. Aribike M.D. and this is my MBBS Journey…felt sooo good to type that.

Flashback to 2009!!!

Teenage Toyin decides to fill medicine and surgery on her jamb form cos I mean how hard can it be…little did I know. Prof aka Daddy tried to discourage me (I apparently I have weird parents).  Anyhoo turns out we didn’t need Prof’s connections or diploma cos we got in on merit, then the nightmare started. The hellish month of registration, after 3 weeks of trying to do it on our own, I and Lola decided to use prof’s connections. Then it was the mistake called DLI. After going through DLI I wished I entered unilag through diploma like everyone I knew, I still do sometimes but we have graduated so it doesn’t really matter right now.

Year 1 was really a breeze for me. At the risk of sounding proud, it was kinda a waste of time.

All I did was go for a few important classes, miss the rest even though I was probably just outside the door for most of them, then do exams. Luckily for me God didn’t count it against me *whew*.

200l: The year medical school really began
This was the year where everything I thought I knew turned to dust, the year I realised I probably wasn’t the genius I thought I was. I mean I was the girl that didn’t need to show report cards in primary school except if my parents decided to make sure my percentage wasn’t going down cos they knew I was gonna come first (On off days 2nd), the girl that was in top 15% throughout secondary school…ugh I digress.

Anyway, I basically failed anatomy till 2nd incourse, it was hard for someone who never got an f before in her life to fail 5 exams one after the other. It didn’t help that I was the girl who kept stuff in, so even though my friends knew I wasn’t happy with the scores they didn’t know how badly it affected me.
I sha muddled my way through 200l, not understanding the situation I found myself in.
PROs came and till tomorrow I still don’t know how I passed…God had everything to do with it.

300l: Happy days.

I loved 300l, 300l was bae. There were so many happy days, awesome friendships. Don’t get me wrong it was tasking doing 7 courses at once but it was fun. My side of class was the fun side, we were quite unserious…we spent most days playing temple run, discovering candy crush. I remember Prof Azinge’s speech about how we were all gonna fail, we proved her wrong *booyah*. Hematology was lit especially with Prof Akanmu’s notes…the man dictated notes from his head without stopping and he always knew where he had stopped in the previous classes. Prof Abdulkareem just made morbid easy to understand, Prof Coker and Dr Wellington made micro bearable…Dr Rita made it annoying. Dr Agbaje and her hats made pharmac alright. Bacteriology incourse that we failed as a class…good times.

Exam week was tough though, by Wednesday I was having headaches 24/7 but guess what God still did it, my results still surprise me.

400l: The year I was meant to chill
Our seniors already said 400l was a chill year with no exams or attendance issues…They lied. It wasn’t chill, although no major exams but attendance apparently became a big deal especially in Medicine department. I sha did 400l, nothing major happened this year.

500l: Another ‘chill’ year

This year was also meant to be chill but it turned out to be about 5 months of group meetings, presentations and singing songs like onigbogi’s ebola song, the breast feeding song etc.

It was annoying sitting through all those classes so we mostly took selfies, played candy crush, stalked people on IG.
Pakoto was another waste of my time people will disagree though. It was a bit nice as I got closer to people I didn’t really talk to. The outings were however epic, something always happened…we lost our way, bus broke down etc.

This was the year me and Dr Okafor became  besties…she disturbed me so much on account of project that I almost ran mad…but she also made my project awesome ߘƠand convinced me to present my project at a conference,  so that was nice.

Secondary postings were not bad…we met weird lecturers including ophthalmology mummy, the blank affect psychiatry professor. The drives to yaba with kemi were however nice with M.I’s chairman album as our soundtrack.

600l: The finale

Finally we get to the most important year, the make or break moment. This year was hard…it was like my body had forgotten how to be awake after 12. It had definitely forgotten how to read overnight.  I was convinced I was gonna have resits this year. My life consisted of wardrounds, clinics, theatre days, lectures, calls, seminars, tutorials, group study meetings (these really helped) and yet we were meant to read.

I couldn’t cope with the demands so I was basically not reading but to make attendance we went for the other things. Each subsequent posting was worse than the other one, long cases were mostly terrible. Everything was alright till one ‘God sent’ human decided to put all of us in trouble by writing a letter to the dean…it eventually worked out *whew*
It wasn’t all bad though, omu resort was lit, trad night too, SACK and symposium were successfulߘƮ

Final PROs…sigh. Coming out of every exam I would go back to my room, pray for God to take control then begin to make myself comfortable with the idea of resit. Medicine’s mcq was the worst, I was convinced that I at least got half of my answers correct till I got to my room and people started answering the questions,  then I realised I probably got only 1/2 right.

OSCE wasn’t any better, stupid mistakes in each exam.

The month of waiting for results made me bipolar…half of me was like I should pass na while the other half was just like oga resits are waiting for you; bae was just tired of me. Results came out and I passed…still can’t believe it, I still check the picture of the results every day to be sure it’s my matric number. The only thing I am sure of is God did it.

All in all medical school was great simply because of all the awesome people I met and became friends with. I knew most of my friends before med school but we became sisters during this journey…even the guys (yes I know what I’m saying) and I’m forever grateful…can’t wait to see y’all as consultants, I try to imagine it and it cracks me up. To the dental students and our friends writing resits I’m praying for success for you guys.

That wraps up my MBBS journey.
Thanks Pero for having me…P.s. I’m sorry it came late.

Twitter: @misTYbikers

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