Do-over it: Resitting a Year

Well shit.

I could end it there and it would be as useful as most of the stuff people say to you when you mess up a year in Medicine.

People’s first instinct is to tell you not to panic, to keep calm and carry on, that there’s a reason for everything, there’s plenty of fish in the sea, a bird in the hand is worth a life full of lemons… Bollocks to that.

Let’s focus on what you can do from here.

10. Accept Failure

You’ve failed — deal with it. If you start bitching about the exam being unfair, or how your hayfever messed you up, or your cat was sick that day and the vet was closed so you spent your study time spooling crap-covered twine out of her ass like a dispenser — you’ll get nowhere. Active, engaged ownership is the single most important factor in successful remediation, and that only starts when you stop blaming and start rebuilding (source).

9. Reflect, Don’t Ruminate

If you start thinking in circles about how much shit you are in, you’ll end up with lots of it to bury yourself in. Grab a cup of tea, have a hot bath, watch some Netflix, then sit with John’s or Gibbs’ reflective model and bash your feelings out on paper. Explain what you had coming up to the exam, what happened in it, and what you felt after it. You’ll learn something about how you learn and maybe even grow from it. Structured reflection, even when awkward or forced, has been shown to improve resilience and academic recovery (source).

8. Don’t Mix Up “Fault” and “Responsibility”

If you had a cobbled road up to the exam that messed with your ability to pass, I feel for you. At the same time, I don’t. It sucks, and it’s not your fault — but it was your responsibility to sort that: declare it to the school, seek help, or just get on with it. This study highlights how framing failure as a learning opportunity instead of a personal flaw is key to recovery — but that shift only happens when students own their path forward.

7. Plan the F–k Out of It

Now that you’ve had your delightful soak and figured out where you went wrong, it’s time to give yourself some god-damn structure. Motivation is hard when you’re drowning your sorrows in whatever calorific vice you’ve inevitably crawled into. But if you plan and share it with someone else — a colleague, fellow resitter, or a mentor — they can help you stay on track. Peer-supported planning boosts accountability, confidence, and exam success (source).

6. Recognise the Blessing of Extra Time

Anything worth doing is worth doing lots of, and you have 12 whole months ahead of everyone else in the same boat. You have an advantage. Use it. Remember: even if you’ve done something before last year — you failed a year. Taking things for granted is for suckers. Done well, remediation results in better long-term outcomes than conventional learning (source).

5. Join the Club

You’re probably not the only one resitting. Maybe it’s worth pooling resources and sharing frustrations. They may be people you’ve never interacted with before, but shared experience can be cathartic. Normalising failure is a critical part of the culture shift needed in medical education (source).

4. Start from Scratch

If you’re really stuck about where your knowledge is — just start from the beginning. If you plan it right, you’ll speed up over familiar stuff. If you’re bogged down in everything, then you know you need help. Progressive, back-to-basics re-engagement works — especially when structured and supervised (source).

3. Regular Repetition Rules

Memory, like my children, needs regular reminders to stop things falling into chaos. Repetition of difficult concepts — again and again — cements them. You may need to repeat things closer together as the exam approaches. That’s normal. Regular spaced repetition has been shown to improve performance and reduce stress in high-stakes settings (source).

2. Remember, People Are Watching

It’s going to feel like everyone is watching you this year — spoiler alert — they are. You’ve earned extra supervision because you needed it, but that’s no bad thing. Use that as a driver. It’s stressful, but they’re there to help you if you fall. A closer support net can actually help reshape your professional identity for the better, if you lean into it (source).

1. If in Doubt, Ask About

If you are truly not getting it, then you need help. Being quiet and uncomplaining gets you nowhere because no one else is in your brain. The horrible irony of being stuck is that you need more people’s help, not less. Students who ask for support early — even when embarrassed — perform better than those who wait or hide it (source).

There’s more I could say, but I’d rather not waffle about stuff I know very little more about.