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Life of a Medic

My journey through Medical School and beyond…

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- Year 1
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Which area of the body are these muscles from? Gold star for anyone who guesses correctly... 😝

Last day of my consolidation week. I made a long list of things that need doing and put them into different categories by highlighting everything in different colours! After today, we just have 2 more weeks of teaching before we break up for Christmas...and then we have EXAMS! How long do you have until your exams? 📝 I’ve been loving all the lovely feedback I’ve been receiving about my planners. You can get the to-do list in the picture above from my shop (linked in bio)! I ship all around the 🌍

I’m going to be putting together a blog post soon listing the different ways I’ve tried to learn Anatomy. I’ve tried a handful of different things, changed up the way I’ve tried to learn it for different topics several times over the course of this year and last year! I’m interested to know what you think the best way is, or what helps you? 🤔 Let me know in the comments below (or DM me) and I may be featuring some of your ideas in the blog! P.S. these cute anatomy pins are from @codexanatomicus❤️

Quick review on the Anatomy colouring book as requested. 💀 So I was given this colouring book as a gift at the beginning of last year, and I thought it was a really cool concept. However, I never really used it throughout the year because a) I didn’t have to time to just sit there and colour and b) I kind of forgot it existed. 🙃 Over the Summer it resurfaced and I went through some pages of the Anatomy we had covered and I do think it was quite helpful in consolidating what I had already learnt. With each colouring page it has an information page summarising the key points from the Anatomy which is really handy! To be honest, I can’t see myself using the colouring book to learn Anatomy from scratch, but I may use it to consolidate a topic. It is a fairly nice and relaxed way to revise. The diagrams in the book are really clear and detailed so if I’m really confused about something, I may just check up the relevant topic to help visualise the area a little better. Anyone else got an anatomy colouring book, how do you use yours? Let me know what you all think of the concept, I’m curious to know whether you think you’d find it helpful...

Last week I submitted my first Arabic writing assignment. You have to reference every time you search up the meaning of a word and trust me, referencing within Arabic text on Word is a challenge because all the words keep jumping around when you try adding numbers in superscript. I quite enjoy writing, it's not too bad (providing you're allowed to use a dictionary), but it's listening I find the most difficult. I can only understand it if it's being spoken really slowly...

Here’s some of my notes on the patterning of the nervous system during embryological development. I find embryology so fascinating, the intricacy and specificity in the development of the human body is amazing - it blows my mind every single time I think about it! Obviously, that also makes it really complex and quite abstract to understand at times. What do you think of embryology - like it, or loathe it?

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” - what are your goals for this November? 🍂 _ I really want to be able to motivate myself to wake up early and get some work done in the weekends. I’ve been terrible with this so far, hence the reason why I’ve been unable to finish PBL every week! 😫 _ I just like to relax in the weekends - I went ice-skating this morning and had loads of fun! I’m going to be finishing my first block of sessions this month, so I’m super excited to be able to get some of my levels! ⛸❄️

This week’s case is about stroke and is horrendously long. The Anatomy for this week is also a HUGE, we have to cover ALL of the cranial nerves and their anatomical pathways! 😫 _ (The irony of this quote since I’m being lazy and posting an old photo. 😅)

Had an easy-going start to the week with just a PPD session. PPD stands for Personal & Professional development and is basically all about the reflective process, encouraging us to reflect on our abilities, interactions with patients etc. _ We have to keep an online portfolio of our reflections and have a couple of group sessions throughout the year based around topics that we need to reflect on. Today’s session was based around “understanding diversity and unconscious bias amongst colleagues” which actually made me think quite a bit.

Who’s sitting the BMAT this October? I’ve got a post up on my blog with tips for each section which will hopefully be helpful for those of you that are. Linked it in my bio! 💙 _ I actually found the BMAT easier than the UKCAT, it was a lot more “prepare-able” in my opinion and having past papers available was also helpful.

Next week we have our Consolidation week which is basically the equivalent of Reading week, across other courses. Apart from Monday, I have no scheduled sessions for the rest of the week and I am so glad because I have got 101 things that I need to catch up on and finish off! 😞 _ I’m just making a list of all the work I’ve got left to finish so I can ensure I cover it all over the week. I also have some coursework-type of thing to do for my Arabic , which I’ll probably focus on during this week because I can’t imagine having time during a standard timetabled week! _ Check out my online shop (linked in my bio) to get your own to-do list like the one above! I ship worldwide! ✨🌍

Year 2 is definitely a lot more intense than year 1 - there’s so much more work, I’ve been finding myself falling behind every week! It is also more interesting as well: a lot of neurology, brain stuff and we’ve started covering some mental health illnesses too! 🧠 I can’t lie, I’m a little worried about how I’m going to be able to retain the masses of info we are covering every week, especially for Anatomy...but hopefully everything will come together in the end. _ Check out my pathology summaries on my online shop - link in bio! 😊

I’ve started keeping an Arabic journal in an attempt to widen my vocab. The thing with language learning is that having gaps in it, really does leave your vocab very rusty! _ I’m not going to force myself to write in it everyday, because I know that’s not going to happen...so I’m setting myself a realistic goal of a couple of times a week. I’ll let you know how it goes! _ (Before anyone points it out: my notebook isn’t the wrong way. In Arabic we write from right to left instead of left to right, so I have to start from the back of the notebook) 😅

The session I enjoy the most during the week is probably our practical PhysPharm sessions. Last week we injected local anaesthetic into each other and this week we are going to be doing various different eye tests. _ It's really cool because you can get into more of the practical elements of the course and experience the direct impacts of drugs and certain tests on each other and yourself! It definitely helps to really see the direct application of things you've been learning about on yourself, plus it's super interesting to literally learn about your own body! _ You can get yourself the weekly planner above by visiting my shop - link is in the bio!

I never bought myself a stethoscope when I started medical school. I know some people buy it at the beginning just for all the excitement of it all and perhaps for it to even serve as motivation to get through the 5 years, but I didn’t. I thought I’d wait until clinical years when you really need one since there’s plenty spare in the medical school that you can always use to practise. _ Not in my clinical years yet, but here I am with my first 2 stethoscopes from @erkakallmeyer - aren’t the colours so pretty! 💕😍 What colour stethoscope do you have (or want to get)? _ These @erkakallmeyer stethoscopes are sooo comfortable - they are literally the first stethoscopes I’ve worn that don’t hurt my ears! Every time I get them out my sister grabs the pink one and my brother takes the blue! 😅

Following my last post on the UKCAT, I’ve been receiving numerous questions about which universities a certain UKCAT score would be appropriate for. Swipe right for some guidelines to help you all out. Bear in mind you shouldn’t base your choices solely on this post, but if you are looking to apply to your strengths you can use some of these unis as a guideline to research into further. _ These boundaries were derived from TMP, so if you’re interested in reading up on them further, check out their website!

Into the first couple of days of second year. We’ve had a couple of introductory lectures and our opening PBL session where we met our new group. We haven’t done enough yet for me to judge the rumours of this semester being the hardest, but hopefully it won’t be too bad. _ On my timetable I have Wednesdays free so I’ll probably be spending that time working on my PBL case every week. I made a start on this week’s case (on spina bifida) this morning, which I’ve been finding really interesting! _ Yesterday I also had my first Arabic session of the year which I really enjoyed. It was fairly relaxed and I feel as though it’ll be a nice breather every week! ☺️ _ How’s uni/school going for everyone else so far?

Planning for next week. I’m using the weekly planner to create different things to focus on at different points throughout the day and the to-do list to keep track of miscellaneous things that need doing at some point during the week. _ This year our PBL cases run from Tuesday to the following Monday (instead of Monday to Friday), so I’m not sure what I’ll need to spend the weekend doing so I’ve left that blank for now. _ Visit the link in my bio to get your own planner set! I ship worldwide and you can use the code PLANNERLOVE for a little discount! 🌎

There’s loads of pathology notes up on my shop (and hopefully many more to come). I’ve summarised different conditions within 2 sides of A4 , because let’s be honest, there’s too much info to fit it all on to one side! _ Link in the bio for everyone who wants to check them out! 😊

Slowly working through my little list...been feeling very unproductive and lazy recently. I’ve also got 1 week to sort out my sleeping schedule, which probably still won’t happen. Thankfully, I hardly have any early starts in my new timetable for this year!

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