{"id":16689,"date":"2019-02-04T09:17:04","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/?p=16689"},"modified":"2019-02-04T09:23:00","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:23:00","slug":"med-school","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/med-school\/","title":{"rendered":"So now you are in Med School&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I still remember the feeling I had when I opened the email that confirmed my place in the Medicine program at Griffith. I had a tear in my eye and couldn\u2019t wait to tell my whole family that my dream had become a reality! I\u2019m sure many of you reading this felt some similar rush of euphoria when you received your email.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward a few months later and it\u2019s all happening for real. You have had orientation week, met lots of new people and now you are starting to get into the rhythm of how the program works. At least that\u2019s how it\u2019s supposed to go, it certainly wasn\u2019t like that for me and a lot of my friends in 3<sup>rd<\/sup> year.<\/p>\n<p>Med school is a whole other world, completely different to anything we have encountered before. We are starting a life\u2026 A LIFE of learning! That\u2019s daunting for me at the best of times and it most certainly was in my first few weeks. I remember sitting in my second PBL thinking, \u201chow am I possibly going to know all this stuff and keep up with all this work.\u201d A rather common thought pattern for most first years right now I would assume. This is completely normal, and it would be a little extraordinary if you were completely comfortable within 2 weeks of arguably the biggest change of your life.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few tips to make the year easier.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Pace yourself<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>I\u2019m not going to say don\u2019t do LO\u2019s, I\u2019m going to say you don\u2019t have to do <strong>every<\/strong> LO <strong>every time<\/strong>. It\u2019s a long year and it\u2019s about picking your battles. If you have extra time one weekend, sure do some extra reading and write some notes but if you don\u2019t feel like it and you are tired, that\u2019s a sign you need to have a break. Take some time for yourself, maybe just a walk, a swim in the ocean or a Netflix binge. Take some pressure off yourself and relax. It\u2019s easier said than done, but practice makes perfect!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><strong>Get in good habits early<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>This one refers to study and sleep mainly. You really want to avoid cramming this year. Start studying at least 3 weeks out from the exam, revising big concepts out loud with your friends to really check your knowledge.<\/li>\n<li>Sleep is so crucial, even more crucial than LOs!! Aim to get at least 8 hours sleep a night because if you aren\u2019t looking after your brain, how can you expect to keep any knowledge in it while you are super tired and on your 3<sup>rd<\/sup> coffee at uni for the day\u2026. You can\u2019t!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><strong>Make loads of mistakes!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>You will understand this more when you start Comm Skills, but Med school is the perfect time to make mistakes, it\u2019s a safe environment where falling flat on your face is like falling on a soft pillow! You can\u2019t learn without making mistakes, so try step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to be prepared to maybe make a mistake!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"4\">\n<li><strong>Try to bring your mind back to the bigger picture.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>It\u2019s a very long road and there is light at the end of the tunnel! There are actually so many tunnels in the future it\u2019s a bit crazy. Remember that all those consultants who you think know so much stuff only know that stuff about one area, eg. Obstetricians birth babies and not much else as they haven\u2019t taken 5 years of specialised training to be able to respond to everything and anything obstetric. You have only just started your life of training and there is too much for one person to know.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ol start=\"5\">\n<li><strong>Finally, don\u2019t sweat the small stuff<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ul>\n<li>Cut yourself a little bit of slack and don\u2019t learn everything about the kidney for the kidney LO. Sure, you might be asked to describe the 4 different types of kidney cancer, but this is unlikely to be relevant unless you are a kidney specialist who specialises in kidney cancer. Focus on the main things that would be relevant to a patient who asked, \u201cWhat is my kidney and what does it do?\u201d. These are questions doctors get asked a lot, and patients usually get long winded, jargon filled answers that leaves patients wondering if doctors are even human beings.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Ask yourself this question next time you are thinking about how deep to learn a topic. What would a patient who had this disease want to know about it and what would be useful for them to know.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Cancer\n<ul>\n<li>Oncogenes \u2013 Make the cancer cells grow faster<\/li>\n<li>Tumour suppressors \u2013 Suppress the growth of the tumour.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You might be thinking, \u201cThaddeus that\u2019s a pretty shallow depth of knowledge about cancer\u201d. I would agree with you and tell you to have a look at the exams because that\u2019s the level of answer they usually want. Obviously not always, but it\u2019s a good general rule!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s about it for now, but please don\u2019t hesitate to contact me on Facebook or by email to discuss anything med school related!<\/p>\n<p>Thaddeus McFarlane<br \/>\nGUMS Vice President<br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:Thaddeus.mcfarlane@griffithuni.edu.au\">Thaddeus.mcfarlane@griffithuni.edu.au<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Have some inspiration for a new blog post? We&#8217;d love to hear from you!<br \/>\n<\/em><em>Email <a href=\"mailto:j.fernandes@gums.org.au\">j.fernandes@gums.org.au<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I still remember the feeling I had when I opened the email that confirmed my place in the Medicine program at Griffith. I had a tear in my eye and couldn\u2019t wait to tell my whole family that my dream had become a reality! I\u2019m sure many of you reading this felt some similar rush [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":16690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[191,190,192,189,188,193,194],"class_list":["post-16689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publications","tag-griffith-university","tag-medical-blog","tag-medical-school-tips","tag-medical-student-blog","tag-medicine","tag-study","tag-wellbeing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16691,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689\/revisions\/16691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gums.org.au\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}