PART 1 – Being a medical student: Monday to Wednesday
Gather close round the fire pit kiddies, your loving medical student elder has taken it upon himself to tell you tales of a time that every aspiring doctor has to go through. It’s a time of trials, discovery, and above all, an astounding lack of sleep. It is (of course) medical school.
I’m going to share with you a little snapshot of my med school career thus far to really give you a flavour of what the unappreciated masses of medical students do most everyday. So the following is a peek into a week in the life of a medical student. Be warned, it’s is far from pretty…
Monday
That Monday just happened to be my birthday (hooray) so I gluttonously decided I’d wake up late, skip the 11am lecture and have a celebratory gym sesh. (Fun fact: exercise helps you relieve stress. Medical school creates stress. Medical school + gym = 1 happy chappy) However, my plans were foiled by my gf (also a medic) surprising me at my flat with an architectural marvel of a cake and presents, nawww cute I know.
Being a far better student and person than I am, she assumed I was going to the lecture (pfft who do you think I am) so I thought I’d go and keep her company. That was my first mistake of the week. Kids you should go to lectures, it’s just every now and then you get a lecture so vehemently dull, you wish you had a tool of some sort to tunnel out of the lecture theatre Shawshank-style.
I then had lunch with the fam, had 3 more lectures then ran on home to prep my flat for the obligatory bday celebrations. Party-proofing a place is no mean feat, much like medicine you have to anticipate the things that will go wrong before they actually happen. However, I just about managed. Celebrations kicked off with a couple of games of beer pong, (birthday boy remained champ, just sayin’) general debauchery, a sortie to one of the capital’s finest institutions and a highly necessary plate of chicken chow mein from Chinatown.
Tuesday
Wake up. Head. Ow. Flat a mess. Myself a mess. 9am lecture on human sexuality definitely not happening. Afternoon lectures attended unwillingly. Went to water polo training where I just floated for a bit feeling sorry for myself. Curtains.
Wednesday
Hump day greeted me with a 2 hour botany exam which signalled the end of a 12 week venture outside of the regular confines of medicine. Necessary? Yes. Enjoyable? Meh.
I then rushed off to a personal tutorial meeting on the other side of London. This meeting was supposed to happen 2 weeks ago, but I’d then trekked all the way across London to find my tutor in San Diego. For a busy person like myself, I thought of all the work/Netflix/sleep I could’ve done in that hour, so when I rocked up the next week I wasn’t the most appreciative of my tutor showing off the ‘goooorgeous’ pics he’d taken in Palm Springs. We live and we learn.
On Wednesday afternoon I had the pleasure of teaching someone (one of you aspiring medics!) how to crack MMIs for an hour. After that I spent five hours or so in that home-away-from-home, the library, catching up on my lecture notes. You’ll learn to love those coffee-fuelled hours…or not, either way.
I then attended my university’s Christmas show. If you don’t know what that is, it involves poking fun at everything and everyone as well as copious amounts of nudity. Still feeling fragile from my bday celebrations, I had promised myself I wouldn’t be going out. Things didn’t go to plan and I woke up on Thursday with a LSE table tennis headband, a pair of angel wings and a helping handful of body art drawn on with a permanent marker.
Stay tuned for the second half my medical student week which is going to be posted on Friday!
Medic love, Tristan x
Uploaded by Tristan on 6th January, 2016
