11 August 2015

Tips for second year Medical Students

Second year is a bit of a hazy blur, but at my medical school it is another academic year.
I enjoyed it more than first year, as we started covering clinical conditions and pathology, and there felt like there was a light at the end of the tunnel to all the biochemistry!

Second year is the last year where you still have free time, as soon as the clinical years start you have 9-5 placement and extra work on top of that. In second year I probably had 20 hours a week and still plenty of afternoons off.

So essentially second year is your last time to play! Make the most of it.


  • Make the most of your free time: this is the last year where you have a lot of free time for societies/ sports etc, obviously you can do these things in the later years! It's just a bit more stressful. So make the most of opportunities.
  • Start thinking about your future career: Attend all the free talks with pizza and Consultants, these are valuable opportunities to think about what you might want to do. Start thinking about how you might bulk our your CV and applications, attend training courses and taster events, get involved with research projects over Summer or during term time. You may even want to think about entering some essay prize competitions, https://www.rsm.ac.uk/prizes-awards/students.aspx, that link provides a fairly comprehensive list of competitions available to medical students and trainees, but check individual speciality websites encase they have more. 
  • Get into good working habits: In first year you might have/ probably got away with doing the minimum amount of work and cramming at the end. But this will have to change as you go on (sadly). In second year we had more exams and anatomy spot tests, as well some ridiculously large modules (I'm talking 100 hours + lecture time), which made me considerably more organised. Trial and test you own methods, from mind maps to a4 posters, but here are some pretty fail safe tips:
  1. Attend everything - I cannot stress this enough. This may the only time you are taught certain material, you have access to world class lecturers and clinicians, use this, it is such a privilege. 
  2. Make good notes at the time - pay attention, there is no point slogging into Uni and spending 5 hours with one head phone in, you might as well have just stayed in bed. If you make good notes at the time, even if you never review the material, it's there as a fail safe for revision time. Much less stressful than desperately calling in favours a week before the exam to get notes!
  3. Review your notes - that being said, reviewing your work will mean you retain it for much longer. This is a pretty open ended one, a 'review' could be anything from reading them again at the end of the week, to making A3 posters you stick around your bedroom wall. A lot of medics have a liking for writing and re-writing their notes... this could possibly be argued as an exercise in procrastination, but for many it works well. Others teach the material to themselves, make mind maps, flashcards etc. There's many ways to review and retain information, find one that works for you. I personally try and summarise/ teach the lecture back to myself, review the weeks information on a Sunday, and then do colourful A4 revision posters around exam time. 
  4. Slow and steady wins the race - the oldest advice is often the best advice! If you do work little and often, it feels much more manageable, and come deadline/ exam time, you should hopefully feel more confident. There's many ways to do this, some people treat Uni as a 9-5 and fill breaks with hour long work sessions, others blitz it all out on a Sunday afternoon, and some do a few hours in the evening Monday to Friday, and take the weekend as a complete break. You will know when is best for you, think about what times of day you work best, when you have priorities (i.e. sports training, volunteering), and how long it normally takes you to complete things. If you put away some hours now, trust me, exams and deadlines become infinitely less stressful, it means on the wards you will actually know things, and generally your life will be considerably easier. 
  • Enjoy yourself: Make the most of your medic and non-medic friends. Soon the non-medics will be graduating, and in clinical years you see much much less of your medic friends, as you're all off on different placements across your County. Have loads of fun and make the most of every opportunity, medical school really is great. 
I hope this has been slightly useful, I was going to add in a point about textbooks, but I generally feel that the people who want to buy loads of text books will do, and the people who were never going to, never will, despite the endless advice about asking older years and checking out the library, who can resist that heavy book deal at Blackwell's. 

Till next time.


3 comments:

  1. Hey, I just recently got my GCSE results and I was going a little paranoid hearing about all these amazing results of students achieving 10 A*'s and more up to 14 A*'s. So my high school decided to cap students at doing a maximum of 8 GCSE's, in which I achieved 6 A*'s and 2 A's.

    English Literature - A*
    Core Science - A*
    Additional Science - A*
    Maths - A*
    History - A*
    Spanish - A*
    Music - A
    English Language - A

    I was wondering if these results would be enough to get me into Cambridge or other top Medical Universities. If not what would need to do to be consider applicable to Universities of such calibre. In College I will be taking Further Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics (as compulsory of students who achieved mostly A's in GCSE's I will also be doing General Studies but I'm not too sure of what qualification it is.) .

    I hope through your extremely busy schedule as a Medic Student you would be able to spare a few minutes to assist me in my enquiry. Thank you very.

    Hercules

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    Replies
    1. Sorry I only just saw this Hercules. Your results are very good with the majority as A* - as your school only allows you to do 8 GCES hopefully Universities will see this and understand why you don't have more. I would carefully check the admission policy of the places you want to apply to, as some have a minimum number of A*'s you need to have achieved, regardless of how many GCSE's you took. I realise this is unfair for people like you who had a cap, but hopefully you can find Universities that don't need a minimum amount. Hope this helps.

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  2. Great activity you choose very valuable topic its will be amazing for medical student who need this guide line .I always appreciate to this type of blogs admins .




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