Is Med School Fun - Level Medicine Blog

Studying medicine is very much a marathon, not a sprint. It is a 5 or 6 year course, where in your final few years holidays become a lot shorter and you are studying almost all year round (instead of having three months off a year). The reason the course is so long is because of the volume of material that needs to be learned; both the basic scientific principles and the clinical skills needed to apply them must be taught.
While this may seem like a fairly monumental task the truth is that while at university time seems to pass incredibly rapidly, probably because the average student is so busy they don’t have time to notice each term flying past. While this is nice as it feels as if you’re making rapid progress through your studies it also means it’s very easy to get behind on work and not catch up until the holidays come around. Fortunately the holidays come around so quickly due to the short length of the terms you can usually get away with this and the holidays are often a valuable opportunity to make sure you understand the past term’s work before the chaos of term time starts again. Some academic staff even go as far as to say…

Life as a Medical Student: 12 Things You Really Have to Know

Being a medical student will involve working harder than you’ve ever worked in your life – but chances are, it’ll also involve having more fun than you’ve ever had before. There are plenty of off-putting myths about being a medical student, but in reality it’s enjoyable, interesting and highly rewarding, especially in light of what you’re working towards. In this article I will describe 12 things about being a medical student that I hope will reassure and excite you about the prospect of studying medicine or if you’re planning on attending our Medicine Summer School at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford.

1. You will be able to use what you learn for the rest of your life

This might seem like a fairly trivial point, but it should not be overlooked. The truth for many courses is that you are only really studying in order to pass your exams and once you have managed this the information which you have tried so hard to learn is largely useless to you. This is very much not the case in medicine, with areas of study including anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology and pathology all being directly applicable in diagnosing, understanding and treating a disease. Not only is this a great incentive to learn the core course material well, in order that you will be a competent doctor, it is also an incentive to go beyond the basic lecture material and satisfy your curiosity about what you have been taught. As a medic this extra detail could one day be put into practice in a clinical situation and could make a crucial difference to a patient. When you are studying medicine you are not just studying for the next exam but taking the first steps on a course of lifelong learning, building your basis of professional knowledge throughout your medical career.

2. Sometimes it’s hard work

Studying medicine comes with a certain expectation to work harder on average than most other students. There are generally more contact hours than other subjects (this year I have a 9-5 day every Friday) with practicals and lectures taking up a great deal of time. Of course it’s not just the contact hours when you are working: lecture notes need to be read over, essays have to be written, practicals should be prepared for and keeping on top of it all can be a challenge. This is especially the case as your work load will vary from week to week, sometimes being set a great deal of work and sometimes having a whole week with very little to do. Therefore it’s important to be flexible with how you work and appreciate that sometimes you will have to put in a long stint of work in order to have the time off when you need it.
There’s also a reasonable amount of pressure on to pass exams. In most subjects other than medicine what you are really studying and aiming for is the best grade possible. Obviously this is true to an extent in medicine, but there is an additional challenge, which is the very high pass marks for the “2nd MB” exams, the ones you have to pass in order to become a doctor. By being passed in these you are essentially being certified as competent enough in a subject area to continue towards a professional medical career. Passing these exams can often require cramming a great deal of knowledge in a small space of time and this can be stressful, but the reward after exams is a long summer to enjoy. Medicine can be challenging, but…

3. It’s not all hard work!

Don’t panic, medicine can be challenging but you’ll still have plenty of time to enjoy being an undergraduate, an experience that many people say is the best time of their life. The level of work in the course is such that you will have time to make the most out of other activities at university, such as sports, music and the huge range of other societies that are on offer at university. All that you need to do in order to manage these other activities is be efficient with the time you spend working; don’t spend a whole afternoon watching YouTube videos if you know you have a music rehearsal that evening. University is about a lot more than simply gaining a degree, you will learn a lot about yourself and other people and hopefully build yourself into someone who is capable of being a good doctor.

4. Being a medical student isn’t all about studying medicine

All these activities that you can do in your spare time aren’t just about having fun, however. While the main reason you do them is to enjoy yourself and take your mind off work they are actually very important in your “personal development”. This is, as mentioned above, working on skills that are outside the scope of academic study but are still vital to being an effective doctor. For example, by taking part in music or theatre you will become accustomed to performing in front of a large crowd of people and as a consequence if you ever have to present at a conference or even to a team of your colleagues, you will be able to stand up with confidence and say what you need to.
Equally, playing in a sports team will help you function with other people, some of whom you may have a personality clash with or strongly differ in opinions. You become used to a position of responsibility, with other people relying on you to perform your role, sometimes under pressure. Sports and societies also provide an opportunity to take a leadership and organisational role, which once again will become very important in a clinical context, whether it is organising ward staff or running a practice as a GP. Medicine is a career in which it is vital to emerge from university as a functional person who is capable of interacting well with others. This will not be achieved by sitting in your room every evening and studying the lecture notes: there is an important balance to be struck between working and having a life.

5. Studying anatomy involves more than looking at pictures

Anatomy can be rather full-on, especially at traditional institutions such as Cambridge, where throughout the course of your first year you dissect a “subject” who has decided to donate their body to training medical students. This means getting involved with a scalpel yourself and doing what can occasionally be a rather unpleasant task. Some people might be really excited by the idea of getting stuck in and having a really practical course in anatomy, but for those who don’t you shouldn’t panic. Most other universities use only pre-prepared dissections (prosections), which you will still have to learn the structures of and examine, but without necessarily getting your hands dirty.

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6. You will make some of your closest friends studying medicine

Make sure you take the time to make the most of the people you’re at university with. They don’t necessarily have to be medics; many people become very close with people in their sports team or society, but medics do seem to end up hanging around together. Unfortunately this can sometimes lead to slightly geeky “medic chat” where before you know what’s happening you end up discussing what happened in the morning’s lectures, or how you found last week’s practical. This can be a good way to remind yourself what happened in the lecture earlier (no one can concentrate all the way through a full one hour lecture), but sometimes it’s just light-hearted discussion about which lecturer makes it very hard to stay awake!

7. Studying medicine brings you up to date with the latest medical research

For those of you who are really interested in the biological sciences, studying medicine is a great opportunity to be brought very close to the frontier of current scientific knowledge, beyond what you will find in textbooks. Your lecturers are all actively involved in their field of interest and as such it is part of their job to stay up to date with all the latest advances and studies that are going on in that area. Therefore they can teach things well before they are published in textbooks and make you aware of very up-to-date and relevant research papers. Be it the latest cell reproduction pathways associated with tumours or the most recently discovered ion channels in the heart, you will be brought up to the current level of understanding.

8. Medicine is a long course

9. You have a vacation, not a holiday

What they mean by this is that the Christmas and Easter breaks are simply the times when you vacate your accommodation and not a complete holiday from work. Of course, this does not necessarily have to be true. If you’ve managed your work very well during term time and stayed on top of everything there is no reason why you can’t enjoy a well earned rest for a few weeks. If, however, you prefer to do as many activities as you can while in residence the vacations can be an important opportunity to pay back the time you borrowed during the term. Most importantly, it’s about finding a balance. You don’t want to start the term feeling fatigued from working too hard over the holidays, but equally you don’t want to start the term not having a clue what’s going on.

10. Organisation is key

Studying at university is a real contrast to being a student at school and one of the real challenges is organising your work and activities. You can no longer rely on your parents to keep a calendar of everything that’s going on and instead you must sort things for yourself. Add to this the fact that a significant proportion of time at university will be spent feeling tired, due to excessive studying or partying, and there is a recipe for potential disaster. Tutorials may clash with rehearsals, practicals may coincide with sports matches or a MedSoc event might be happening when you’re meant to be seeing your family. The most important thing is to have some kind of system, whether it is a paper diary you keep with you or a calendar on your phone. Make sure you’re not the one who is always nearly missing things or running round at the last minute trying to work out where you’re supposed to be.

11. If you pass your exams you’ll become a doctor

Bar any kind of disaster, if you pass all your exams while studying medicine you will go on to become a doctor. This may well seem like stating the obvious, but it’s worth taking a step back and thinking about this. By passing you in an exam a university is certifying that you are competent enough in that subject area to continue on the path to becoming a doctor. What does this mean for you? First of all it means that it can be quite difficult to pass your exams. In other subjects you are certified as competent by scoring a decent grade (usually a 2:1), however in medicine if you pass you will be guaranteed to continue down the path of clinical school and continue on to a professional medical career.
While there is the drawback of having an especially tough time passing exams this is also a very exciting prospect. If you manage to continue at a reasonable level, putting enough work in, you will qualify as a doctor. Compare this with a subject such as law, where if you pass your law degree with a 2:1 you are not guaranteed to become a lawyer; you are not even guaranteed a job. This is also the case with engineering, while you may become a certified engineer it does not mean you have any kind of reassurance that you will go on to have a job in engineering. If things get tough and you think you might struggle to pass just remember that by passing you are taking one step more towards being a doctor.

12. Most of your peers will be very intelligent

Medical students represent an extremely limited selection of people your age and they will tend to be both very capable and hard working. This can sometimes result in you feeling rather demoralised when comparing yourself to other medics, especially as you will tend to notice the ones working harder than you more than the rest. Remember, the people you are comparing yourself to represent the very top fraction of students in the country and as such you should not be disheartened if some of them are better than you. In fact there will be plenty of other medical students at the same level as you who are making the most out of university to develop themselves as a person, not just as a student.

Being a medical student puts you in a very privileged position, among the very top students across the country. It generally seems to be the case that medics follow the mantra “work hard, play hard”. Most importantly, remember that being a student is not only a means to an end, but an end in itself. Make sure you make the most of being an undergraduate!

If you want a taste of life as a medical student, why not join our Medicine Summer School at the University of Cambridge or the University of Oxford?

Is It Possible to Enjoy Medical School? How to Make the Most of Your 4 Years

They say the four years of medical school are the roughest years of your schooling life. The immense volume, complex physiology, and sleepless nights are a recipe for misery. Or are they?

Let’s cover how you can actually enjoy medical school and even make it the best 4 years of your academic career.

I know I’m not the only one when I say that medical school was my favorite 4 years of schooling. Sure, high school was carefree and relatively easy, college was all about exploration and growing independent, but medical school offers something unique. Believe me when I say you aren’t doomed to being miserable for all 4 years.

My own experience was different from most, but there are still principles that will apply to you. College was fun and I did enjoy it, but the experience was tainted by some health and family struggles. There was certainly more free time and more partying, but the subject matter of classes wasn’t always focused on areas of interest. And while college pushed and challenged me, medical school helped me discover what I was capable of and grow into the person I am today.

If you focus on and appreciate these unique benefits, you’ll find yourself in a much better mental space. Here are the 4 factors that can transform your medical school experience.

1 | Relevant Subject Matter

The first and most obvious difference from college to medical school is the subject matter you’re studying. As a college student, you have to deal with GE’s and other prerequisite classes that have little to do with practicing medicine.

However, in medical school, just about everything you study is highly relevant, and that alone makes the material more engaging. A big reason many students find themselves bored with college is much of the material seems to lack relevance or significance. You may complain that learning some obscure organic chemistry nuance isn’t important. There’s much less of that in medical school.

There will be some unnecessary details, and you will be studying much harder in medical school, but on average, you’ll enjoy your classes more. And sure, you’ll enjoy some classes more than others, but that’s expected. I loved cardiology, neurology, and GI, for example, but I was less enamored by renal. You’ll find your own most and least favorite blocks. But at least you don’t have to do mandatory English classes or other classes that aren’t directly connected to your interests.

The depth with which you approach each of these organ systems will also be rewarding in and of itself. It’s amazing to understand the physiology of every human who has ever lived, including yourself. When you come across information about the body or health, you’ll get a kick out of knowing exactly what’s being discussed and even being able to think a few layers deeper. You’ll look back on the process and be amazed how much about the human body you learned in a short period of time.

Once you get to your clinical rotations as a third and fourth year, you’ll be able to apply all the knowledge you’ve accumulated to patient care. That alone is incredibly satisfying.

2 | Control Over Your Focus

As a premed, it’s necessary to spend a considerable amount of time pursuing relevant extracurriculars . Between the clinical experiences, volunteer hours, leadership, and research, you’ll find yourself pulled in multiple different directions from an academic perspective.

One of the underappreciated factors in medical school is you don’t have to worry about any of that, except for research, of course. Other extracurriculars are far less important for your residency application .

This also translates to much more control over your schedule, at least during the first two years of medical school. If your school has mandatory class, that’s generally just half a day, after which you can spend your time however you please. If class isn’t mandatory, many students opt to skip, self-study, and unlock even more free time in their day.

I have many fond memories of studying with my friends in the medical school after class, bumping hip hop late into the night studying for anatomy tests in the cadaver lab, and even the occasional late-night shenanigans when we felt mentally fried.

When clinical rotations rolled around, I realized how nice it was to have a flexible schedule. As a third and fourth year, you’ll have little control over your schedule. You spend most of your time in the hospital working on your own, and you can’t control who you’re on rotation with.

Even if you are with your friend, you’ll be spending most of your time working with your residents and attendings, not your classmates. There’s something magical about studying hard with friends, having a shared struggle, and maintaining control over your schedule.

Your clinical years will have a different set of perks and drawbacks, but you’ll remain focused on becoming a better physician and learning the clinical practice of medicine. After all, it’s what you came to medical school for—to learn how to treat patients in the clinical setting.

3 | Talented Peers With Diverse Experience

You may have noticed some change amongst your peers going from high school to college. That contrast is even starker from college to medical school. I was amazed by the diversity, talent, and character of individuals in my medical school class. It was impressive, to say the least.

We had former Olympians, highly accomplished artists, mountaineers who had climbed Everest, and so much more. You’ll be surrounded by interesting and impressive individuals you can certainly learn from. Unlike college, not everyone is going to be your age either. You’ll have many non-traditional classmates with prior careers and families who are now pursuing a passion, and they have unique life experience you can learn from.

And because you’re with people with similar life ambitions and goals, you’ll make many close friendships that will last a lifetime.

4 | Self-Development and Growth

Lastly, medical school offers a unique stimulus for self-growth and development. Through the pressure cooker that is medical school, you’ll be forced to grow in more ways than one.

Your resilience will develop rapidly to handle the ups and downs of medical school. Given the tight time constraints, you’ll find yourself pushing your own productivity and efficiency, building systems to get more done in less time that will help you throughout your life.

But perhaps most importantly, you’ll find yourself facing more key questions about who you are.

College is very much about building independence, but many of us are still reliant on external factors of validation from our social groups. That’s simply part of the natural developmental process in late adolescence to early adulthood.

As you transition to medical school and push yourself further, you’ll find yourself becoming more comfortable in your own skin and have a deeper understanding of who you are. You’ll grow intimately familiar with your faults and, hopefully, grow to accept them and improve upon them. You’ll also discover your strengths and lean into them further.

This was my favorite part of medical school, as it was during these four years that I became who I am today. I developed authentic confidence, knowing I could accomplish whatever I set my mind to. I grew more efficient, productive, and intentional with my time and energy. I explored dating and what I wanted in a life partner. I confronted fears like public speaking and overcame them.

I loved my four years of medical school, and it certainly was far from a miserable experience. I hope it can be a phenomenal experience for you as well.

The grind is hard, but remember—your attitude and interpretation of events are more important than the actual events themselves. If you appreciate these four factors, you’ll be much happier throughout your medical school career.

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