Thursday, January 21, 2010

What an exciting time!

Congratulations to everyone who made it into medicine this year; specifically those coming to UWS - your combination of smarts, effort and good looks probably helped your odds ;) On a more serious note, commiserations to those who did not make it in yet. I always looked at entry into medicine as a when, not an if question; and this seems to be the correct attitude time and time again for those who continue to pursue their goal. The 'when' question could be answered as soon as in a few weeks time; late round offers are abound in medicine, with so many offers going to so many interstaters, as well as those who decide to move out of their home state, and those who decide that medicine is not for them anymore. There may be a few key questions that you would like to ask:

Q) What other options are there?
A) The first one to think about is graduate entry into medicine. This is not necessarily a bad thing; the whole process of finishing graduate entry could only take a year more than some undergraduate courses - in addition, it gives you an extra degree, and it gives you both time and the practical option to consider going into medicine - you may discover the career that makes your heart beat and your brain tick, or your passion for medicine may glow even brighter. The second one to think about is alternate pathways into medicine; UNSW has such a stream for Med Science students (not recommended if you want to do Med Science explicitly for that stream), UWS also has a stream via a B Science(Advanced). Details are in my first post. You may also want to consider taking a gap year - whilst some may consider it an utter waste of time, a gap year may give you time and space to think, perhaps concentrate on the UMAT if it was your hurdle, allow you to travel or to work full-time to save up money for possible admission to an interstate uni (if money is your hurdle). So, no, it's not the end of the world.

Q) I'm thinking of repeating Year 12 next year, since my HSC/Final year results was the one that let me down.
A) In theory, this may sound like a good idea, since you *only* sacrifice a year, and may well stand to do great, especially if you thought you didn't put enough effort. From my observations though, it would be infinitely better in practice to go to university. Science, Med Science, and allied health degrees all have a fair bit of overlap with medicine, especially in first year. In many universities, the difference between med science and medicine in first year is the rather cursory clinical experience. If you start university, you're not even sacrificing a year; you will have more options open to you, such as graduate entry (which you would only be two years away from if you completed a year of university, provided you do a 3-year degree), you are working towards a degree, you get to experience university life, and you get a taste of the style of study university requires. In addition, a year of a related degree would most probably help you in your medicine course when you get in; from a personal point of view, our strongest academic students generally already have university experience.

Q) I should give up, I wasn't meant to do medicine anyway.
A) That's what I felt like when main round came and I didn't make it. This may give you a chance to reassess your own motives for doing medicine, and whether they are enough to make you want to keep going for it. As many would say, getting into the course is the hardest part of medicine. Also, if you hadn't applied for interstate universities or investigated many alternate options (including not applying for universities inside your own state...and yes that happens), you should look into them now and apply for them next year.

Now, possible questions that first years may want to know about! Most and many, are and have been answered numerous times in the forum Med Students Online, but I guess I'll dish out my own personal point of view:

Q) Should I buy textbooks/stethoscope/sphygmomanometer/tendon hammer/penlight/labcoat/etcetcetc now?
A) This depends on your university - generally though, there isn't much of a reason to get things early. There seems to be very low competition amongst medical suppliers, so as a result, sales are often rare and may not really represent great value at all. Also, allowing yourself to attend university for the first few weeks will help you in your textbook-buying decision making, since you start to see which textbooks are favoured by professors. You also get a chance to trial run textbooks if you use the uni library. I have a post on buying cheap textbooks if you're short of cash, use the tags on the side of this blog to find it. There are some textbooks that seem to be the standard for pretty much all universities though, so buying them early (say, if you were leaving soon to go to another country) probably wouldn't hurt - Talley and O'Connor's Clinical Examinations, Gray's Anatomy for Students, Guyton's Medical Physiology seem to be fairly standard texts, especially the first one. For steths, a Littmann at the $100 mark will be suffice for med school and even beyond; if you want, there are more pricey scopes around. Almost everything else can wait; in fact, stethoscopes can wait for a while too, especially if your university isn't very heavily focused on the clinical side in first year. For UWS students, your first semester's clinical experience consists of history taking, which does not require anything other than your brain and your mouth (although it would probably be best if you had a body).

Q) Can I start studying?
A) Yes you can; whether you should, I would say, emphatically, no. Cmon, enjoy your break! You just made it into med! You are awesome and study is not awesome - awesome and not awesome don't mix, so don't study!

Q) But I really want to!
A) Umm...ok. In that case, you start reading Wikipedia (read anything medical related I guess?). Get used to using it; even if you hate it, chances are you will eventually search up wikipedia when you get stuck on something. Wikipedia is a great place to collect random tidbits of knowledge, so go ahead and be a study nerd!

Q) Are grades important in medical school?
A) Grades for the sake of grades, I would say, are unimportant. However, depending on your uni, and whether you got a scholarship, it may well be very important for you (if you want to do Honours, or have to maintain a scholarship, for example). Personally, I think grades are also important as kind of a guideline as to how much you're learning (maybe not the best, but still). If you're aiming for a pass, and a pass only, chances are that you'll end up not doing very much study at all. And in courses where the contact hours can be quite low (such as UWS, maybe other universities as well), that frame of mind can set you quite close onto the road to failing. They do not, however, carry much weight directly after university though - otherwise universities which implement a pass/fail grading system would disadvantage their high achievers, and I can't see that happening.

Q) How much work should I be expecting to do?
A) In first year, to be honest, not a lot. When relatives/friends ask you the cursory questions, and then ask "So, is med hard?", you will probably disappoint them. You could probably easily get by with an hour or two a day, and some solid study in the time leading up to exams. If you've done a year of related university work prior, it may be even better. So, put on your party hats and expect to get inducted hard-style into university life ;)

Ok, so, t-t-t-t-that's all, folks!

Thursday, January 14, 2010

A finger in all the pies...

So as I'm beginning to reach the end of my student summer research scholarship (SSRS), with about 3 weeks remaining, it appears that the most of my time has actually not been dedicated to a single project, but rather to a variety of projects running at the same time, by different researchers, in the same laboratories. It's been a great learning experience in terms of what is happening at the university's labs, and was not only observational but also included some hands-on experience such as the preparation of a salt solution, miniaturisation of pipette diameters, and taking part in experiments both as subjects and being involved in the running of them. The one thing that I want to see before I finish up is what actually happens when there are no SSRS students around, and I've yet to see the boring side of research - except the rather long waits during experiments when either waiting for something to happen, or trying to find a nerve and patiently moving around a recording needle in the vicinity of that aforementioned nerve. Ok, which can get a bit tedious. I've remarked to my supervisor that it seems the interesting side of research is presented in the scholarship, and he agreed; which is fair enough, and great for the students on this scholarship :)

As an aside, I've started to at least try to prepare for this upcoming semester's work. Promises of a long hard grind for this year have shaken me to start studying near the end of the holidays - a good thing or a bad thing, I am not sure. Surprisingly though, I've found that I've gone out with my friends a lot more than during the break between high school and university, despite the SSRS. It's great to catch up with high school friends after a few months; it does make me miss them. Although I do not miss the hidden pencil case/calculator/bottle/bag/anything that belongs to me. Or the 'friendly' punches.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year!

So, with the start of a new year, there begins fresh aspirations, old wishes and another chance to do something interesting with the life you live. For me, this meant a new list of resolutions (I am proud to say that almost half of my resolutions for 2009 were met), which included some old ones (the ones from 2009 that weren't met), and, as for the something interesting...well...I went back to research today.
Yes, it is January 4th, the first Monday of the new year and I already logged a day at the labs, albeit another relaxed one. I have a feeling my progress in terms of attendance would be severely hindered though, thanks to two events: 1) Cityrail trackwork...on WEEKDAYS! Forcing me to take a train to the city, before coming down to Macarthur; and thus lengthening the travel time to a hint under two hours... and 2) Ramp trackwork. There is a single ramp connecting the station to the UWS campus; the alternative is walking around the other side to the shopping centre, across a large bridge and into the other entrance of our uni. Methinks a car would solve this, but alas, still, I am more than three score hours away from that lofty 120 hour L's requirement...
So, these two will continue for the next two weeks, and I hope I won't have to travel too many times to the campus. Else, I will be trying my best to pass off driving to uni with my dad as 'L's driving practise'.

Edit: Well, it's actually the 5th now. Dang it, failed blog post.