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. :-)