Yes, you absolutely can go out, do exercise and do other stuff. Medicine definitely isn’t all-consuming and you can easily make time to do other things and keep up with other interests, in fact, you have to make sure you have things outside of Medicine too in order to maintain your wellbeing and that’s something which is highly encouraged in medical school.
The course structure you choose will also have an impact on how much “free time” you have to do other things and immerse yourself in uni life, so for example, Manchester has a PBL/integrated structure so you do have lots of free time during the week, if however, you went for a more traditional course you might find you’re in lectures 9-5 every day of the week and have less spare time. I know Medicine is sometimes portrayed as being a 24/7 lifestyle – but it isn’t at all, I honestly don’t know where that comes from because as a medical student I’ve never felt completely tied up in that manner.
You said “usual uni experience” and I suppose that can be defined in different ways. As medics we do get involved in societies, sports and do extra things like that, but because Manchester is a really big medical school, we have a lot of our own societies and a lot of medics tend to get involved with medical societies, the MedSoc’s sports societies etc, but you can easily get involved in other university-wide societies and a lot of people do. Generally, as you progress through the course you will get busier, but Medicine can only control your life as much as you let it!
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