Halfway there

Today is Kay's last day of her third year at medical school and she's halfway to becoming a doctor. It's a five-year course but she has opted to do what a lot of medical schools offer and take a year out doing intercalation.  (Bristol sums up intercalation thus - although Kay is not at Bristol, but it is pretty much the same all over the country.) It is basically a year out in the middle of a medical or dental degree to study another (relevant to medicine) subject to BSc degree level, get a paper published, a BSc degree in one year and acquire brownie points which will help when eventually seeking a job.  She'll continue with year 4 of Medicine at the end of the intercalated year. This means she has a six-year slog altogether and is thus now halfway through.

picture courtesy of "Ask a Dropout"

She is also moving house this weekend. Up to now she has shared with 4 other medics but some are moving into their own (parent-bought) flats* as they are sick of student accommodation, one is moving in with a boyfriend, and Kay and another are moving out to another student house share. They all have to move out of their old house by 30 June but cannot move in to the new house until 1 July which means she is homeless for 24 hours. She has solved the problem by arranging to move her stuff (including some small furniture) into a friend's new flat* for 24 hours until she can move into the new house, but I questioned what others would do if they did not have a friend's flat to move into and that the agents should relent and let her move in a day earlier to avoid complication (the new house is already empty so that wouldn't have been a problem). Kay's reply was that there are thousands in the same boat this weekend, so expect to see a lot of young people wandering around with their homes on their back on Saturday night!