May/100
Intercalating..
At the end of last year I made the decision to take a year out from medicine to intercalate in the Cellular and Molecular Department at university. I originally liked the sound of doing a degree in Cancer Biology studying the molecular mechanisms behind cancer - but come October and the time to decide which modules to take I'd changed my options to cover more microbiology and bacteriology. So I've spent the last few months learning all about antibiotic resistance, cancer genes, genetics and all sorts of bacteria.
I've really enjoyed the year - though I'm more than a little worried about how I'm going to pass my finals (which I'm currently in the midst of!). Intercalating gave me the chance to work in a lab as part of my dissertation project. I spent 3 months looking at the interactions of stem cells with Staphylococcus aureus bacteria by growing, infecting and differentiating stem cells into bone cells. The idea being that this would prove useful in researching the pathogenesis of osteomyelitis. I liked being able to choose a project that was so relevant to clinical disease and having the chance to learn about the science and work involved in informing the new treatments and drugs that I will one day be working with.
Carrying out the project was a steep learning curve and despite my expectation that it would involve a lot of hard work it was sometimes hard to stay motivated on the days when I knew I had no hope of leaving before my experiment had run - even if that turned out to be 8 in the evening!
I'll definitely be returning to medicine in September with a renewed enthusiasm for the subject but I would intercalate all over again given the chance and recommend it to other medical students considering doing the same.
Jul/090
Where to begin?!
Summer term flew by, meaning tremendous exam stress (did I mention we medics are slightly competitive?) and many late nights of revision! Exams were based around our neuroscience/anatomy teaching and the endocrine and reproductive system - some were horrible as expected and others came as a huge relief to those of us who were already scrapping our summer plans in fear of resits! Having spent six weeks loathing neuroanatomy I was shocked to learn that I had in fact excelled in the exam and come out in the top 5% of my year (there is probably a lesson to be learned in that somewhere!).
Exams aside however, I am already finding myself running out of things to do until I return to university at the end of September. I'm really looking forwards to going back and beginning my intercalation in Cancer Biology which I realise is more than a little bit geeky! At the same time I realise that I have a lot of work to do to catch up with everyone else who has been studying the degree for two years already! I'm glad I made the decision to take the year out of medicine to study for it, having come straight from school at eighteen without a gap year I feel as though I'm accelerating towards adulthood and indeed 'doctor'hood without taking any kind of break to gain more life experience.
Whilst I'm sat taking in the grim Manchester weather many of my medic friends are off globetrotting. I've got a family holiday to look forwards to alongside some work on a summer camp later in August. No doubt September and my 21st will be here before I know it!
I always have lots of plans for designing this website & yet never get around to doing anything about them. Hopefully I'll have a surge of creativity and do something about it in the next few weeks, watch this space!
Feb/090
Gotta love brains..
..or not.
We've reached that stage in second year medicine where the budding surgeons can hardly contain their excitement.. but many more of us are shaking in our boots because we've just hit the neuroscience part of our course.
If you thought the brain was just a blobby, jelly like thing - think again.. there are names for all the pokey spaces, wiggly lines and cells that make up a brain.. names that I don't think I'll ever get my head around. Its hard to fathom how one bit of grey brain has a completely different job to the grey bit of brain next to it. Sadly this is exactly what the next six weeks of my life will be spent finding out!
We are two days in. I turned up with some enthusiasm - 'its the brain right? There must be lots of interesting things to learn about that'. I can feel that same enthusiasm slipping away rather quickly.. hopefully Amazon will be my friend and when my two shiny new neuroscience textbooks arrive my excitement will be 'rekindled'...
I can live in hope!
Jenn
Hi! I’m Jen, I’m 21 years old and study medicine in the UK. I'm currently studying for an intercalated degree in Pathology and Microbiology but excited about going back to clinical medicine next year!
