I had a less than typical first year

My first year spanned 2 years… I had a less than typical first year of medical school; for a start, it spanned 2 years! During the first semester, I didn’t know what I was doing but I was determined to work hard. I set myself the task of watching every lecture again and making notes …

Summer Days: How to spend your holiday before Results Day

“Biology students, your time has finished, please put your pens down”. For me, these words were sweeter than any I’d heard in the past month, one consisting mainly of industrial tea consumption, mountain ranges of past papers forming across my bedroom floor and bedtimes that made waking up feeling like crawling out of my coffin. …

Running the London Marathon (Part 2)

It has now been a week since completing the 2017 Virgin London Marathon for Team Heads Together. My legs are feeling normal again and my toes still attached. Running a marathon is really tough! The method in my madness was to break it down into four sections – pretty much running four 10km runs. Marathon …

Fresher Fails!

You’ve heard them before, but here’s a quick refresh of what to do and what not to do in your first year! 1. “I’ll leave all my revision notes till the end of term and do them all at once” Inevitably you will miss the odd lecture or you’ll sit through 4 hours of Behavioural …

Re-learning to revise (Part 2)

(Continued from Part 1) Mind maps/spider diagrams Ideal for the student who thoroughly understands and remembers concepts. Sometimes a prompt is all that is needed and leads to a “word association”. This gets you out of the rote learning trap and probably makes for more ingrained knowledge which is necessary to become a good doctor. …

Re-learning to revise (Part 1)

Revision is one of those mysterious concepts which is unique to every individual. There are those who need to go over everything multiple times before an exam to the point they can recite a textbook with their eyes closed; alternatively, you have the annoying but admirable students who learn as they go along and manage …

Some tips for the UKCAT

With the UKCAT coming up soon, we thought we’d repost a quick reminder of what to expect! Hi, it’s TJ again, and today I’m going to give some quick tips on yet another part of the admissions process: the UKCAT. Hopefully you’ve already found out if you need to take the UKCAT and booked yourself …

Transitioning from high school to university

Hey! I’m Riya and it’s been just 3 months since I started learning Medicine at Nottingham. Coming all the way from Thailand, I couldn’t ask for a better welcome. Although some things here are inevitably different (Why does the sun set before lectures end??), I believe I have made the right choice. High school vs …

Peer support at medical school

Hi everyone, I hope you have enjoyed the blog so far! It’s Rob back again, and in my second blog I thought I’d touch upon peer support networks available at medical schools. As some of the blogs have already hinted at, medical school has its lows as well as its highs. But one thing medicine …

Exams exams exams…

Hi, it’s Hannah again! So no-one likes exams and I’m sure it’s at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds at the moment with GCSE, AS and A level exams coming up soon. I am also unfortunately revising at the moment for end of fourth year exams which are my last set now before …