Today is the day of my exams. I am taking the National Medical Admissions Test at University of Sto. Tomas, Manila. The NMAT is one of the first steps towards entering my new journey— to become a doctor, inshaAllah.
I woke up at 1:20 am and hurriedly sharpened my pencils and arranged my papers and reviewers on my file folder. I prepared my clothes and read some books before taking a bath. My parents, siblings, and me prepared our snacks the night before. My parents rented a car, and around 4:20 am, we headed off to UST. It was a chilly morning and I’m quite hungry but had the least appetite. I had a cup of coffee and some sandwiches for breakfast, and while on travel, I dozed off asleep, but I managed to offer the Fajr Prayer. We arrived at UST before 6:00am and it was still dark, and there were a very handful of examinees that already arrived. We didn’t recognize the Albertus Magnus building at first, and we had to go back to the entrance until we found the location of the building. The name lists of examinees were posted on front of the building’s entrance, and my father saw my name, including my number and room assignment. We waited for about an hour as we observed the other examinees arrived bit by bit. Some of them arrived together with their parents and siblings, while some arrived alone, and others with their schoolmates.
Around 7:00am, the examinees formed a line at the entrance of the building, and after a few minutes, we went to our respective exam room assignments. It was after 8:00am when the proctor finally arrived. After distributing the answer sheets and the test booklets, I proceeded to answer the first part, the Verbal portion. I was very anxious and worried that I might be totally blank, but happily, I finished the Verbal portion ahead of time, after which I answered and finished the Inductive Reasoning portion ahead of time, but I wasn’t very confident of my answers, especially on the number and letter series. The Quantitative portion totally contorted my mind because there were a lot of solving on percentages, number sentences, and algebraic expressions, but thankfully, I finished this portion just in time. The final portion for the morning set is the Perceptual Acuity which included a series of patterns, which is to identify the correct mirror image of the given image per item, and the rest included a series of book titles and addresses and to identify the correct wordings and punctuations among the rest of the choices— I chose to answer this part first and then I proceeded to answer the mirror images. When the proctor announced the final remaining minutes of the test, I was also on my way on answering the final items, and thankfully, I finished it just in time. I even managed to double check some of my answers on the previous portions.
My neck was aching by lunch time and my palms were sweaty. I had my bottled juice and sandwich for lunch and I ate while standing, waiting outside the room. I also offered my Dhuhr Prayer standing, as there was not a convenient place where I could pray. The afternoon set of the exams started at 12:50 pm, and by the start of the test, I was beginning to feel dizzy and I wanted to just go on and finish it as soon as possible. It was difficult working while being on two conflicting forces—I was extremely dizzy, my neck was aching, and at the same time, I had to be totally focused on answering the items. For Biology, there were easy and extremely difficult items, and afterwards, Physics and Chemistry were both extremely difficult, and I must say that I just guessed most of my answers. Even though I felt a bit at ease for the Social Sciences portion, I also guessed some of the items. Thankfully, despite of my uneasy situation, I managed to finish the afternoon set ahead of time, and I spent the few minutes in stretching my neck and resting my head, and relaxing a bit.
Finally, I went through NMAT and I finished it! I’ll be waiting for the results next year. Allah knows that I gave my best and I am hoping for the best—to have high scores to enroll for Medical School next year, inshaAllah.
