The National recruitment programme for psychiatry training has just opened up again and if I want to return to that career path, I have to apply soon. The original plan when I jumped on a train and left Aberdeen to do this Professional Writing masters down here in Cornwall was to complete psychiatry training in the north of Scotland. However, I recently went back to Aberdeen for Hogmanay and apparently sat up bolt upright in my sleep that night wailing,
'Nooo! This isn't my life! I don't live here anymore!'
I think this might be abject proof that my unconscious perhaps supports the general consensus that Aberdeen made me thoroughly miserable. So why am I planning to return to the place I just fled from to do exactly what I was doing before I moved down here?
In the lead up to Christmas our class had a career session with Laura Brammar, a senior careers consultant for Falmouth University, who mentioned that she previously worked as a Medical Careers consultant with creative medics toying with alternative career paths.
The session was brilliant and very illuminating in ways I almost didn't want my life to be illuminated. We started by drawing little graphs of our lives and the shape of mine made me wonder if I possibly need to be whacked onto some Lithium. Big highs living in Edinburgh, Elgin, moving to Cornwall then huge scooping lows on each significant dumping of my life thus far and then the move to Aberdeen went waay below the x axis.
The next rude awakening involved getting us to draw a 'role cake' of how we split our time amongst the roles we play in life- try it yourself! See how much you prioritise work, leisure, motherhood, your partner and hobbies. But whatever you do, don't draw a pie chart and publish it on a website where your potential employees can see it, especially if it looks like this...
'Nooo! This isn't my life! I don't live here anymore!'
I think this might be abject proof that my unconscious perhaps supports the general consensus that Aberdeen made me thoroughly miserable. So why am I planning to return to the place I just fled from to do exactly what I was doing before I moved down here?
In the lead up to Christmas our class had a career session with Laura Brammar, a senior careers consultant for Falmouth University, who mentioned that she previously worked as a Medical Careers consultant with creative medics toying with alternative career paths.
The session was brilliant and very illuminating in ways I almost didn't want my life to be illuminated. We started by drawing little graphs of our lives and the shape of mine made me wonder if I possibly need to be whacked onto some Lithium. Big highs living in Edinburgh, Elgin, moving to Cornwall then huge scooping lows on each significant dumping of my life thus far and then the move to Aberdeen went waay below the x axis.
The next rude awakening involved getting us to draw a 'role cake' of how we split our time amongst the roles we play in life- try it yourself! See how much you prioritise work, leisure, motherhood, your partner and hobbies. But whatever you do, don't draw a pie chart and publish it on a website where your potential employees can see it, especially if it looks like this...
Bollocks! was my first thought, this does not bode well for my plan to return to full time doctoring. I looked over at my pals, scribbling away, woah! Yummy Mummy to my right's biggest pie chunk is parent, and friend to my right's pie was mostly singer-songwriter and partner.
Have I just become incredibly selfish with my time now that I seem to be all about the writing?
As we went on to draw how we would like our role cakes to look, I didn't have much alteration to do, I just added a question mark to the doctor segment, feeling it probably ought to be bigger. It made me realise how subconscious all the choices I make are about how I spend my time and energy, no wonder I felt compressed when my life cake involved cycling to and from the full time job whilst completing all the tasks required to progress through training.
I'm not the sort to mooch around lecturers after class and grill the lecturers about where they get their ideas or about their creative process. But I knew we could get free careers advice as a student at Falmouth and this lady seemed extremely clued up so I arranged to meet up with her.
What the Careers Consultant said....
Have I just become incredibly selfish with my time now that I seem to be all about the writing?
As we went on to draw how we would like our role cakes to look, I didn't have much alteration to do, I just added a question mark to the doctor segment, feeling it probably ought to be bigger. It made me realise how subconscious all the choices I make are about how I spend my time and energy, no wonder I felt compressed when my life cake involved cycling to and from the full time job whilst completing all the tasks required to progress through training.
I'm not the sort to mooch around lecturers after class and grill the lecturers about where they get their ideas or about their creative process. But I knew we could get free careers advice as a student at Falmouth and this lady seemed extremely clued up so I arranged to meet up with her.
What the Careers Consultant said....
It was tipping down with rain and going to see Laura was the only thing I had planned that day. I went in and after about 5 minutes into the meeting, it seemed she could see quite clearly that returning to medicine scored pretty low on my happiness chart.
'So why is going back to psychiatry as low as a 4 out of 10?' she asked me, and then asked me again with returning to psychiatry in a different place, or hell, what about not returning at all?
She reminded me that I could train as a psychotherapist without 'putting myself through' another two, or even five years of being in the system that had left my inner resources so depleted.
'You won't find any career as structured as medicine except maybe the military,' she said, 'And it can seem chaotic leaving that structure as it gives your life a nice neat shape that it is hard to let go of as everything is mapped out step by step for you and this can make the real world out there seem quite scary and chaotic.
'You could train as a psychotherapist in two years without returning to the clinical environment,' she suggested as my eyes widened at the thought.
I told her about a therapist one of my friends went to see who had a room at the bottom of his garden with roses climbing around the entrance. Apparently, during their sessions, he would occasionally reach behind him to his bookshelf to pull down a poetry book he thought would help without even having to conduct a literature review or consult the clinical guidelines!! It did make me question why I am applying to go back to a place I was miserable in to 'finish what I started' and tie off that nice neat set of three exams, the big scary practical exam and two more years at least in a hospital I was unhappy in despite all the friends I had there.
Laura said that it rarely happens that medics get the creative stuff 'out of their system' (Whaat? But that's what this year is all about!). She thought that already in Cornwall I seem to have established some great links and plans and am finding the balance I really could have done with back in Aberdeen.
'What about another year spent applying what you've learnt from the masters about being a writer? What would I do with another year?' Oooh such naughtiness, what a thought! Another year of freedom? Why of course I'd spend it writing my socks off and locuming. And I believe I could do that, I could be self-sufficient and earn just enough to sustain this lovely life here that is making me so happy.
She also suggested returning part time if they allow it, though my previous requests to go part time for multiple reasons were met with a very flat 'computer sez no' response.
The main thing that makes me want to go back to a hospital I know is because I liked that all the trainees are there together, not spread out all over the county and there is banter to be had with my pals at lunch time and with the night nurses who man reception on night shifts. I wouldn't want to duck out of the camaraderie of working on a busy ward at this stage to be a self-employed psychotherapist, I feel I have a lot more to learn and it's 'good for me' to endure the logical, structured approach to managing what is defined as mental illness within those walls. There is also a mischievous part of me that knows the best way to change a system is from within it and another part of me that enjoys being in a position of conflict within myself because that's the kind of conflict that generates the best poetry. So really I'm suffering for my art. Innit.
So I left the appointment clutching a piece of paper with a little map of my career drawn on it that immediately got soggy in the rain but I also left with a fresh, optimistic perspective on how realistic it is that things aren't going to feel any different if I move back to Aberdeen a second time when the Universe squealed 'Nooo' so loudly the first time.
Just as I left the appointment I got a three page long donotreplytothismessage from the recruitment HR department saying my psychiatry application would be rejected if I had not sent the evidence to support my application by midday tomorrow. Thanks for that lovely message which I can't reply to to tell you that I already sent it you on the day I submitted the application you were unable to process due to a technical difficulty...grrr
'So why is going back to psychiatry as low as a 4 out of 10?' she asked me, and then asked me again with returning to psychiatry in a different place, or hell, what about not returning at all?
She reminded me that I could train as a psychotherapist without 'putting myself through' another two, or even five years of being in the system that had left my inner resources so depleted.
'You won't find any career as structured as medicine except maybe the military,' she said, 'And it can seem chaotic leaving that structure as it gives your life a nice neat shape that it is hard to let go of as everything is mapped out step by step for you and this can make the real world out there seem quite scary and chaotic.
'You could train as a psychotherapist in two years without returning to the clinical environment,' she suggested as my eyes widened at the thought.
I told her about a therapist one of my friends went to see who had a room at the bottom of his garden with roses climbing around the entrance. Apparently, during their sessions, he would occasionally reach behind him to his bookshelf to pull down a poetry book he thought would help without even having to conduct a literature review or consult the clinical guidelines!! It did make me question why I am applying to go back to a place I was miserable in to 'finish what I started' and tie off that nice neat set of three exams, the big scary practical exam and two more years at least in a hospital I was unhappy in despite all the friends I had there.
Laura said that it rarely happens that medics get the creative stuff 'out of their system' (Whaat? But that's what this year is all about!). She thought that already in Cornwall I seem to have established some great links and plans and am finding the balance I really could have done with back in Aberdeen.
'What about another year spent applying what you've learnt from the masters about being a writer? What would I do with another year?' Oooh such naughtiness, what a thought! Another year of freedom? Why of course I'd spend it writing my socks off and locuming. And I believe I could do that, I could be self-sufficient and earn just enough to sustain this lovely life here that is making me so happy.
She also suggested returning part time if they allow it, though my previous requests to go part time for multiple reasons were met with a very flat 'computer sez no' response.
The main thing that makes me want to go back to a hospital I know is because I liked that all the trainees are there together, not spread out all over the county and there is banter to be had with my pals at lunch time and with the night nurses who man reception on night shifts. I wouldn't want to duck out of the camaraderie of working on a busy ward at this stage to be a self-employed psychotherapist, I feel I have a lot more to learn and it's 'good for me' to endure the logical, structured approach to managing what is defined as mental illness within those walls. There is also a mischievous part of me that knows the best way to change a system is from within it and another part of me that enjoys being in a position of conflict within myself because that's the kind of conflict that generates the best poetry. So really I'm suffering for my art. Innit.
So I left the appointment clutching a piece of paper with a little map of my career drawn on it that immediately got soggy in the rain but I also left with a fresh, optimistic perspective on how realistic it is that things aren't going to feel any different if I move back to Aberdeen a second time when the Universe squealed 'Nooo' so loudly the first time.
Just as I left the appointment I got a three page long donotreplytothismessage from the recruitment HR department saying my psychiatry application would be rejected if I had not sent the evidence to support my application by midday tomorrow. Thanks for that lovely message which I can't reply to to tell you that I already sent it you on the day I submitted the application you were unable to process due to a technical difficulty...grrr
Later that evening I went on a late night lesbian Christmas shopping trip to Truro with my flatmates which somehow led to me ending up in a caravan glimmering with hundreds of shiny mirrors parked up outside Debenham's having my palm drawn on with biro by some geezer called Gypsy Acora.
One of my friends from work told me about her visit to him and the things he'd guessed about her right and I was intrigued, just in case he was one of these people who is so in tune with your body language and responses that he can pick up on clues we give out. I thought that maybe just having these vibes I'm giving off verbalised might help me make the decisions I know I have to make.
One of my friends from work told me about her visit to him and the things he'd guessed about her right and I was intrigued, just in case he was one of these people who is so in tune with your body language and responses that he can pick up on clues we give out. I thought that maybe just having these vibes I'm giving off verbalised might help me make the decisions I know I have to make.
What Gypsy Acora said...
So I got in and I said absolutely nothing, I just let him hold my hand and off he went, to summarise his conclusions about me..
This may just be the result of cold reading and what he could deduce from the fact that I was probably a student in my twenties, not smugly married otherwise I'd probably not be hovering outside a fortune teller's caravan with my pals.
Maybe these are just the bits I remember because they are what I paid attention to in amongst the other stuff he spraffed out. He didn't seem to make any eye contact or to be noticing my reactions but I guess, just as in medicine, you can diagnose hundreds of things by the feel and look of a patient's hand probably without the patient realising you're checking out the grade of their finger clubbing or reaching behind them for the arrest buzzer when you feel their clammy shut down hand. I imagine I'm quite an easy person to read, but did I leave feeling like he had picked up on some truths about where I'm at, where I've come from and what I need to do next.
And so I stumbled out of the caravan back into the rain wondering if I'd just been conned out of twenty quid, clutching yet another leaflet, but for my star sign this time. The leaflet said if you sent him fifteen quid in an envelope he will send back a detailed breakdown of how 2014 will pan out for you as a Taurus, so maybe everything he would have told me the exact same in writing if I'd never met him....hmmm.
- I definitely won't stay in Falmouth, he sees me somewhere much more open (Could my non-Cornish accent have been the giveaway there?!)
- My love life is a 'bloody disaster'- I've really suffered he said but there is a break in my love line suggesting my current relationship will end in tears and much later on I will meet someone who speaks my language and is more 'on my level.' (that could be applied pretty generically to anybody else without a wedding ring on I suppose...)
- Right now he said I'm not living, I'm just exisiting, I'm trapped.
- But in the future I'd be very successful and happy like I am now. (He knew I was happy now so that was perceptive of him?!)
This may just be the result of cold reading and what he could deduce from the fact that I was probably a student in my twenties, not smugly married otherwise I'd probably not be hovering outside a fortune teller's caravan with my pals.
Maybe these are just the bits I remember because they are what I paid attention to in amongst the other stuff he spraffed out. He didn't seem to make any eye contact or to be noticing my reactions but I guess, just as in medicine, you can diagnose hundreds of things by the feel and look of a patient's hand probably without the patient realising you're checking out the grade of their finger clubbing or reaching behind them for the arrest buzzer when you feel their clammy shut down hand. I imagine I'm quite an easy person to read, but did I leave feeling like he had picked up on some truths about where I'm at, where I've come from and what I need to do next.
And so I stumbled out of the caravan back into the rain wondering if I'd just been conned out of twenty quid, clutching yet another leaflet, but for my star sign this time. The leaflet said if you sent him fifteen quid in an envelope he will send back a detailed breakdown of how 2014 will pan out for you as a Taurus, so maybe everything he would have told me the exact same in writing if I'd never met him....hmmm.
What does the future hold for you?
Try it, draw that blasted role cake of your life and see how much of your time and energy you actually expend on each segment. Is it wildly different to how you want your life to look? And if you have squished bits of pie that you want to be bigger, ask yourself who you are doing the other stuff for and whether it serves or restricts your growth...
Or alternatively get down to a local palm reading gypsy in a caravan in a town centre near you.
Acknowledgements:
Laura Brammar
Gypsy Acora
Michelle Stiles
Medic pals: If leaving medicine is something you've toyed with each time the application cycle starts again, would be great to hear how you justified whatever choice you ended up making!
Try it, draw that blasted role cake of your life and see how much of your time and energy you actually expend on each segment. Is it wildly different to how you want your life to look? And if you have squished bits of pie that you want to be bigger, ask yourself who you are doing the other stuff for and whether it serves or restricts your growth...
Or alternatively get down to a local palm reading gypsy in a caravan in a town centre near you.
Acknowledgements:
Laura Brammar
Gypsy Acora
Michelle Stiles
Medic pals: If leaving medicine is something you've toyed with each time the application cycle starts again, would be great to hear how you justified whatever choice you ended up making!