a week in the life of a first year
Table of contents
A Week in the Life
sorta like one of those week in the life things you see on youtube. so this will stink a bit. at the time, i was a first year medical student at newcastle university.
Monday
6:20am. Land at London Heathrow after an 8 hour flight from Heathrow. Feeling surprisingly refreshed.
12.30pm. Arrive at Newcastle University. Scoff down some scampi and sprint off to lectures.
7pm. Emergency Medicine event on Gynaceology and Obstetrics emergencies. Feeling tired after munching two Mayo Chickens on the way home.
Tuesday
9am. Peer Mentoring training session in preparation of being a Peer Mentor for second year. Engaging and exciting session. Not feeling tired.
Wednesday
12pm. Lecture on Pharmacological Intervention of Gastric and Oesophageal Disease. Rarity this year where I actually felt prepared after pre-reading but also linking aspects of previous lectures together. Still on feeling balanced.
Thursday
10am. Meeting with a Writing Tutor to assess my writing style but it actually was more a case of simplifying my writing approach. Probably one of the best 30 minutes of my life. All you need to do is show you have an understanding of an area - simply court-report rather than story-tell. Don’t add extra flower. If you think you’re adding extra flower - well you’re in trouble mate.
Friday
1pm. Team-based Learning. Basically a session of what interesting examination concept have the lecturers come up with today. Today its we’ll do a quiz - but this time as a team! Our team actually fared very well and ended up ranking as the highest achieving team. I was personally frustrated at my performance. Had a broad skim over case lecture notes but failed to pick out individual details. Also failed to schematically prepare for the types of questions i.e. differential diagnoses and questions that are likely SBA questions.
7pm. London 2012 Olympics on PS3 with flatmates. Big up to the first year flatmates.
Saturday
9am. Newcastle Academic Medicine Society Conference. Enjoyable day. Setting up, helping run stands and attending the odd lecture. Great to meet the full committee and looking forward to committing myself more.
Sunday
11pm. Feeling refreshed after an easy day of Case-embedded and End of Case questions with some simple GI blood anatomy. Not feeling overworked but inspired to return to work.
And that’s a week. How quickly fortunes and events change throughout the week. Important to move onto the next day with a mindset of always looking to improve.