Dr. Britain

If your not back at school, you’ll be going back to school. If your in year 12, welcome to sixth form, the next two years will probably drain you if you put in the effort, or they will leave you unfulfilled and in a place you don’t want to be in if you don’t focus.

If your going for high flying courses, or are generally aspiring for something, now is the time to really put the effort in, if you do you will be left with a sense of achievement and will be able to look back and be all like: “BOO-YEAH!”.

1. Be realistic: Sometimes it sucks, but you have to take stock of things, if your not scoring A’s and you really are working your nuts off then don’t apply for courses that require A’s. One important caveat: If your riding on the coat tails of your GCSE or AS success you’ll get disappointed you got to up the ante and put the maximum level of effort in. So if you get like BCC in January (a la me) and know you didn’t work your backside off then go back and do it properly. Once you’ve discovered your limits, then its time to think of something worth doing that will satisfy you.
2. Go over your notes:  I can’t emphasise this enough, if you expect to just learn something first time off, your going to sit down and revise for your exams and hit a wall of purest “WHAT IS THIS BS?1?!?!” and that isn’t fun. Ok, don’t expect to go into you revision knowing your colour chemistry off by heart. But at least no the basics. What I did is copy up all my notes at the end of each sub topic (AAAAAH THERE IS A JACK OFF SPIDER IN MY ROOM!!!!) so you at least know it.
3. Find a revision method that doesn’t leave you dying: Okay, make sure you find a revision method that actually works for you, I used to make massive spider diagrams, other people like to make flash cards, what ever. Just don’t read the module book, all the peeps who say this “works for me”, i bet you a fiver you just blankly glance at each page and that isn’t revision. (Hell if it genuinely does work for you, and I see some proof, i’ll wang that £5 your way)
4. Take some time to yourself: I used to work every night till about 8/8.30 and I took Friday evening and Saturday off. If you don’t take a bit of personal time off each night, you will get burn out. Let me tell you, it fridging sucks!

Just, good luck everyone, this next year/ two years will make or break you. Aspire, and work!

2nd December, 2011.

Words cannot begin to describe how happy i am right now, this is a gooooood thiiiinnnggg!!!!!!!!!!

A medical school is actually interested in me!

AAB at Newcastle for Biomedical Science with Medical Microbiology, I am very happy, someone wants me :). At the time last year when i had no choice but Biomedical Science this was my first choice.

I’m meeting so many people who could be in my course next year, absolutely brilliant!

Basically my application is finished, i imagine that by tomorrow it will be gone, its hard to believe that my involvement is basically over in my application, so one schools’ interviews start in November, so i could be getting a response for them soon. Another sends out an online interview that has to be completed, so that will be good, at least i will be doing something! And my last choice doesn’t even do interviews, so it will be interesting to see what happens from them. Wish me luck people!

When going round your Universities on visit days, just think to yourself, do i match what they want, for instance, i think I’m the perfect case for a PBL based course, i think the personality of a doctor is very important , so i match perfectly with PBL (problem based learning) and to some extent integrated courses, but my approach would be completely incompatible with say a traditional course.

When you’ve decided what kind of applicant you think you are, try tailor your statement to those kind of places, i’ll get back to you if it works!

The start to my A2 year has been stressful at best, in hindsight, booking my UKCAT on pretty much the first week back was a terrible call (i got 2570 in the end). But its had a severe effect on my homework. The worst came today where my chemistry homework came back with the comment:

“Your going to have to try harder if your serious about your grade”

Message received, from now on i’ll be doing homework straight away, i’m not giving up this opportunity!!!!

Asking about their UKCAT cutoff, lets hope the news is good!