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.


01 August 2015

Coming back!

Wow it has been a long time!

I still get regular emails from comments on my GSCE-related posts with the usual 'I'm doing 16 GSCE's and 4 early A-Levels can I get into Oxford?' but sadly they didn't inspire me much to reply (I'm sure the information is already there...).
I passed 2nd and 3rd year and am intercalating next year, however I will start uploading posts again on surviving the academic and clinical years, and whether or not to intercalate!

Thank you to anyone who still uses/ reads this blog.

Wannabe (and closer to being) Doctor