Freshers Week

The freshers arrive tomorow, so life is about to get very busy. The medics at Nottingham have their own freshers fayre in addition to main uni one. All the medics still go to the main uni one, but there are lots of companies and organizations that are only really interested in medics (like the BMA and medico-legal defence unions) so we have our own little fayre! It's taken a lot of setting up but we have 35 different stands this year so it's gonna be really good. Because medics usually have their own version of many uni societies, like drama and sports teams, all of them wanna turn up to freshers fayre and recruit new members so it's a bit manic!

As well as making sure everyone gets to go round the medics fayre, we also have to give all the first years their new medic parent! At Nottingham everyone has a medic mum or dad in the year above-so you end up with an entire family of grandparents etc. It's a great way to steal free notes to pass exams and also a good way to get free meals (especially when you're eating minging stuff in hall every day of your first year!). It's a bit of a nightmare giving all the kids out though, imagine 600 people milling around looking for their 1 parent or child!

So as well as doing all this Medical Society (Medsoc) related stuff, i'm plugging away at my dissertation. It's not going too badly at the moment, i've been reading lots of papers from wierd and obscure journals across the world which is interesting. I think i'm beginning to get my head round the whole metabolism of the eye thing upon which my project rests which is good news.

And yes, the lash is back.....as all the students trickle back into Nottingham the clubs and bars are gearing up again and my liver and kidneys are bracing themselves. This year Medsoc has some awesome deals with bars in town, including queue jump at the biggest club in town on a friday night!! (how jealous does that make people!). We also get 50% off at one bar, and general discounts like 25% off food at lots of places!

So now, this is my last evening of peace and quiet and TV before the manic uni lifestyle returns and I once again turn to coffee and caffeine tablets for survival. (don't use them they're not good for you apparantly!)

Third Year Begins

And so my last lovely 14 week summer holiday comes to an end and I have journeyed up to Nottingham once again to begin (or carry on with) year 3.

This year I have to complete a dissertation which will take me up until the end of January. That goes towards my Bachelor of Medical Science degree which I get at the end of this year. After that is all done, I have a weeks holiday before doing a 2 week course in drugs (the legal kind). Having hopefully passed that some time at the beginning of March I will be starting the clinical part of the course, which continues until I qualify.

So what does my dissertation involve? Every med student at Nottingham does one in their 3rd year, and every single one is different. Some are lab-based research projects, others are primarily based in reviewing other peoples papers and drawing new conclusions. All of them are based on the latest science and some of them are interesting. It all really depends how keen on science and research you are, but even if all you want to be is some mega cool trauma surgeon, you still need to learn how to do research, so it is of benefit to everyone. My project is researching the metabolic causes of diabetic retinopathy. Which is basicallly posh-language for why do diabetic people go blind?

Of course there are plenty of distractions other than work. This year I am the Medical society (Medsoc) President. So along with the committee i'll be organising some awesome social events for the medics in Nottingham (i hope they'll be awesome, or I suppose someone could sue me after writing that).

Ill keep you updated as to how the social calender is going, and if i have any space left i'll also let you know how my project is going. :-)