Update...

Anyone who frequents this blog will have noticed my posts have been few and far between lately. Now I am properly back but before I continue where I left off I wanted to explain what's been going on with me recently so you know why I've been so absent!

As you may know I am a medical student by day and this year underwent my 4th and penultimate year of medical school. After a very long and busy year I had to undergo the hardest exams of my life so far. Due to the new exam system put in place this year for 4th year Leeds medics, a large number of us had to undergo additional "sequential" testing (though not a resit) to pull up our marks, therefore doing another set of exams a couple of weeks after the first set. After these were done I started my elective placement at a local GP surgery and so was very busy. This week I received my exams results and unfortunately did not get what I was hoping for. I passed my written paper well, but unfortunately failed my practical exam by what looks like only a small amount. Very frustratingly, due to this new exam system they have replaced the end of summer resit exams with a resit year instead, meaning that those of us who have failed now have to resit the entire of 4th year instead of just the one exam. 

This has been very upsetting for me as I had a number of personal problems this year that made it all the more difficult, but despite them I tried my best to work hard and get through. I felt very confident coming out of the practical exam and so it came as a great shock to find out I had failed. The new exam system was allegedly put in place to ensure that more students passed, however over 5 times more people have failed this year than ever before, meaning that 25 of us are going to be doing the year again. Despite the flaws in the new system, and the questionable evidence base for it, the medical school are defending it to the end so we have no way to appeal. On top of all that the medical school refuse to give us our marks or feedback so all we have to go on are our grades, meaning that if we're doing something wrong we have to work it out ourselves instead of being made aware of it so we can improve it. 

Frankly I'm disgusted at how the system has screwed myself and my colleagues over this year. There were some really surprising faces in the resit group and there's a universal feeling of suspicion throughout the whole year group that there's something not right about the situation. However there is nothing we can do at present but suck it up, work hard, and finally defeat 4th year next year.

SO as you can see I've had a lot of unfortunate stuff going on that has taken up much of my time. When I've been relaxing I've played with lots of new nail art styles and colour combos but unfortunately haven't had time to show you properly :(

What I HAVE got coming up though will hopefully make up for that :D Firstly I'm going to show you some of the nail art I have done since I last posted. These will be all Instagram pics so I apologise for the poorer quality!

Secondly I'm going to show you my new nail art love: roses! I showed you a little preview of the nails I did for my boyfriend's graduation, and I loved the style so much I tried it again with other colours. I'll start off by showing you what I've done and running you briefly through how to do it, and in another post later I will do a proper picture tutorial to show you how to recreate it yourselves!

Thirdly I'm going to complete my reviews of the Superdrug face mask collection. I've gone through quite a few of these now so I'll be spreading them out over the rest of summer. As well as these I will inevitably return to more beauty and nail reviews!

Finally, in between the madness of the last couple of months, I've been taking the time to get to know my camera better and have been enjoying more control over my photography. I'm going to share some of what I've create with you lovely lot too, so expect lots more photography posts! I've gone back to deviant art and have been submitting my work there so please check them out in the meantime :D

So that's about it really! I'm going to get to work on making up for lost time, so keep those eyes peeled :)