Today has been a pretty weird day. I started the day by being hurled verbal abuse at by the phlebotomist who was venting his frustrations from another student on me. I was *this* close to tears and wanted to run out with my tail in between my legs but he later apologised for being unreasonable and it was all good in the end, albeit traumatising. All the way through being shouted at, I kept praying for calmness and indeed, calm was I.

I had another futile attempt at getting an assessment form signed off in the afternoon/evening-ish. I was told by the registrar to clerk a patient that I can use in my assessment and get signed off. Somewhere in between clerking the patient and the initial intended presentation to get signed off, I was swept off by theyap into clerking, presenting, bleeping then shouting at the biochemistry team to speed up with the blood results, checking up chest x-rays and ecgs, lending stethoscopes so my incompetence at completing physical examinations can be covered up for and after everything has been sorted and done, all the forms had been filled in and finally, handing the patient over to the on-take team. The main irony being that I did way more than what was needed to get signed off, yet I did not get signed off because I was so caught up with the job that i kind of forgot about the form. Even if I did remember the form, I probably wouldn't have pulled it out anyway because now that I think about it, it will totally ruin the learning experience.

In retrospect, although it seemed like I was thrown into the deep end, there was a safety netting to fall back on. Who better to review the patient with than someone who knew exactly how little medical students are capable of, experienced enough to basically, fill in all the gaps without making the medical student feel redundant and useless, yet being reassuring and pushing you to discover and develop your capabilities all at the same time.

That is one pretty damn amazing doctor.