Congratulations to everyone with their offers to study BM5/6 (and 4 of course). I met quite a few of you during the offer holders open days (with the BM6 one tomorrow). The university had a record number of applications this year so absolutely well done.
It would seem that the university is introducing interviews as of this year so you dodged that bullet well!
Looking forward to seeing you all in October, especially those who join my MedSoc family! Woop!
So, we are now well into semester 2. I am pleased to say I passed semester one and passed it well. The anatomy was hard to learn but the exam wasn’t nearly as hard as the practice exams in the practical sessions.
The exams (though this may change) are a written paper called “short notes”. This is like mini essays/bullet points/diagrams on questions with drug calculations at the start. Then there is the one best answer which is statistics and then multiple choice questions.
They’re scary but not too bad, honest. Most of the year group got C grades (around 100 people), while only 50ish got A-B grades. Seriously don’t expect A’s in med school! I was more than happy with my B!
Semester 2 is “RCR” or “Respiratory/Cardiovascular/Renal” 1. So far it has been interesting, with a lot more practical sessions than foundation of medicine. Blood pressures, ECGs and respiratory examinations have been covered so far for example.
We also are continuing our student selected unit with the humanities module. It requires a creative outcome (art, scultpure, writing etc) and I am making a cake! As always there is an SSU essay (reflective) to go alongside it and Medicine in practice (kinda clinical sessions) will also be examined this semester with an essay, a presentation and being observed taking a patient history.
We’ve also got our big essay due in 4 weeks. This time it is on Infective Endocarditis and related drugs, lesions, ECGs and blood pressures/ABGs. Busy busy busy!
So there will be an update on medicine soon I promise but in the meantime, if you have a few moments and my blog has ever been helpful then please can you take a second to vote for my lovely Craig Mayhew in the lynx space race.
I will even trade votes for interview practice if you’d like, or personal statement reviews! Email me via my contact page for more info
So I have been back a month. So far we have covered a variety of topics in the Foundations of Medicine course.
In anatomy we have covered the skeleton and muscle. Next week we start the nervous system. The course has been revamped however and is now much better. Small group study frequently means you get good one on one time with teachers.
We have covered muscle and bone in histology along with connective tissue. This is a series of practicals and lectures and ties in nicely with anatomy! Pathology is similar with small group studies (and we get to see a post-mortem!) and lectures on inflammation and edema (which we had a small symposium on, this is like an interactive lecture).
In biochem and cellular biology we have done cell communication (so action potentials for example) and we have also done biomembranes and ion distribution within the body!
We have also done a little bit of communication skills in lectures and tied that in during MiP – Medicine in Practice. Here we have already met out families who we will follow for a year, and practiced history taking. Next week we start on real patients.
We have done a little psych and sociology and are currently on IPL – Interprofessional learning week, although this is likely to be removed from the syllabus next year.
The first assignment – a 2500 word essay on chronic pain and depression is also due on the 5th of November and we have also had small group tutorials to support us with it.
There is lots to do and lots to learn but it’s a good start!
Will update in a few weeks time!
So I had to drop out of the 1st year of BM5 just before Christmas but I am coming back in October to start again!
The blog will be more detailed and shinier than ever and I will try to post once a week about life as a medical student. To those joining me in Autumn, come say hi!
I was feeling creative and decided to make jam. Couldn’t find a recipe i liked the look of so made one up… Worked quite well so thought I would share!
Ingredients:
1kg Sugar with added pectin ( got this from Sainsbury’s)
1kg strawberries
Handful of blueberries
Equipment
Knife
Chopping board
Large heavy bottomed saucepan
Jam jars - sterilised as per my other blog post!
Plastic circle things that go with the waxy discs
Waxy discs
Sugar thermometer ( optional )
Step 1, gather the stuff
Step 2 chop and hull the strawberries. You want to get rid of all the leaves. One good technique is to cut under the leaves at each each side to create a v. This wastes less fruit than cutting off the whole top. You want to cut them into chunks.
Step 3, smush the fruit with the sugar in a saucepan. I used a potato masher. Then when it’s all mixed, begin heating slowly. This helps with the smushing. Don’t smush all lumps out unless you want a smooth jam but the seeds and blueberries wills hinder this.
After 5 mins of mixing and smushing it should look like this:
Heat slowly, stirring occasionally until it reaches 120 degrees C, or until the bubbles will not stir down but the liquid below is not cloudy. It shouldnt be grainy with sugar.
Quickly spoon the jam into warm sterilised jars, at the wax disc and plastic disc and pop the lids on!
You can see the plastic disc sticking out from under the lids.
Tasty!
Keeps for 6 weeks in fridge open,1 year in jars in cool dark place.
A very good friend of mine has recently had some amazing success in med school applications. Like me, my friend has had a non-traditional background that is not associated with successful medicine applicants. However despite and in spite of this, they now stand in a better position than many “traditional” medicine applicants.
Times are changing and universities are becoming more and more aware of how many brilliant and talented people are out there, hidden by state schools and lack of encouragement. If you aspire to medicine, it has never been more accessible. Go for it!
Then remove the green screw labelled ODD. This releases the cd drive and allows you to remove this screw:
Then remove the other green ringed screw labelled HDD/Memory and remove the plate.
Next remove the screws around the hdd:
You should now be able to remove the whole back plate of plastic, being careful of the vga port. Start by clicking it off around the edges and slowly work around until it pops off. The hdd will feed through the hole where the RAM sits.
I have spent all day trying to make nice with Titanium and give it what it wanted. It kept telling me:
Android configuration details.
One or more pieces are missing from the Android SDK. It may be that the Android SDK is already installed and Titanium Studio cannot locate the directory, or it may be that some additional components need to be installed…
So I kept telling it that it had everything, and in a fit of desperation tried to bribe it with additional add ons and tools. It just wasn’t having it.
Turned out that in Window -> Preferences -> Titanium Studio +> Titanium and in the box called Titanium I hadn’t correctly specified the file path to Android SDK Home. I had “C:\Program Files\Android\” when it really wanted “C:\Program Files\Android\android-sdk”.
This may have been obvious, and probably should have been, but I missed it and took a day to find it. If I can save someone else some time then I am all for it.
After downloading Titanium I found that it would never ever (ever) load, instead, despite several restarts, I continually got the error message “Failed to create virtual machine”. After uninstalling and reinstalling a few times and still having no luck I had a bit of a Google and found a fix that worked for me.
C: (or equivalent) -> Program Files -> Appcelerator -> Titanium Studio and open up TitaniumStudio.ini. Mine looked like this:
