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Surviving your First Term of Medical School

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By Harvey Smith – 9th September 2024

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Harvey has been with Zero Gravity since he was in school. These days, he is a medical student at the University of East Anglia - and not to embarrass him - but he’s smashing it. Want to become a highly achieving medical student like Harvey at uni? Read his tips on crushing med school.

Surviving Your First Term of Medical School

Have you accepted your medical school offer? Are you due to start your medical career in September? Then you’re in the right place, to learn about the biggest challenges of starting medical school and how to overcome them.

(But first, take a minute to congratulate yourself and look back on all the hard work you have put in to reach this point… I mean, you're off to become a doctor now!)

Medical school can seem daunting. You will find geniuses who know everything already, topics so complicated they make your brain hurt, new terminology which looks like a foreign language, new cultures and work styles, and all of which occur in the first few weeks of living in a new area by yourself. It’s a lot - but let’s now talk about how we can overcome these problems…


Medical Terminology

Medicine is known for its ludicrous terminology. You might have seen the TikTok trend where medical students struggle to tell whether a word denotes a muscle or a dinosaur - it’s insanely hard. Understanding the terminology was a massive problem for me, as you’re trying to follow a lecture, while only understanding half of the content. I overcame this by looking at lectures ahead of time (which all medical students have the ability to do). I’d pick out any long/new word I didn’t understand and research it, which meant anything from asking older students, using Google, or checking the BNF (British National Formulary, which contains every drug/medication you will ever need to know throughout your medical career - they have an app + a textbook which is useful for exams!).

This tactic means that you not only understand the lecture as it’s being delivered, but it also puts you a step ahead - as learning the long, more complex words usually means you learn the core medical information!


Note Taking

Any medical school you're off to is going to have a very intense course schedule - apologies. In practice, this means a lot of information will be taught in a relatively short amount of time, which means that perfecting your note-taking skills is an absolute must.

Don’t make the mistake I did - I started off Week 1 attempting to write down every scrap of info from ALL lectures, which by Week 2 put me a week behind! After speaking to several older students, I gathered that the majority of the notes I had taken were actually useless, as unlike A Levels, medical school has no syllabus, and lecturers teach around their topic rather than direct information. So how do you do it?

Summarising. You’ll quickly learn that note-taking is just the ability to summarise an entire topic in a sentence or two.

For example, ‘X drug can be used as perioperative prophylaxis for X surgery when used appropriately, with the correct dose, administration, and patient, to prevent postoperative infection’.

This can rather be summarised as ‘X drug can be used before surgery for X’ in your notes, HALVING the time required to write everything from the lecture. Everyone will summarise differently, and this is something that will take time to perfect, so if you take a while when starting out, don’t worry! Everything will quickly fit into place if you are motivated enough. For reference, I once spent 8 hours on a Saturday studying for a lecture, which I can now do in 30 minutes! The solution is finding what works for you as an individual.

In terms of the best method of note taking? It’s up to you. Every single person will take notes in their own way, let it be through flash cards, word documents, websites, paper notes. All that matters is that you can summarise!

Competition in Medical School

Medical students are friendly, engaging and hard-working people. However, one thing many med students have in common is a drive to be at the top. This is something I felt acutely when starting my medical career, as the university will release where you rank within your year at medical school.

But, I’m here to tell you that whatever your current ranking is, it DOES NOT matter. This is because after Year 5, you will be randomly assigned numbers which determine whether you get your top choices of where to do your foundation training as a doctor. So this means if someone is doing ‘better’ than you, or you feel ‘bad’ at one specific topic, it really isn’t the end of the world!

This also means you should try to help each other as much as possible, such as sharing notes with classmates, teaching each other topics, and being there for each other when you/they feel down. Remember, your goal is to practise medicine, become a doctor, and help people - not to study your mind out to be ‘at the top’.


Taking Breaks/Time Management

I am sure you have all heard, ‘Take a break!’ and ‘You will burn out!’ when studying for your A Levels/UCATs.

It’s good advice - but something I ignored at the start of medical school. Sure, I excelled throughout the middle of the first term, but as I neared Christmas, my motivation and attitude to studying completely dropped. For the first time in my life, I experienced burnout.
But there is a way to prevent this! Use this method to avoid burnout:

  1. Find a gap in your studies (placement, holidays, a chill lecture week, etc.), and use this to study the following week’s lectures. These will feel easier as working in advance completely loses the stress of urgency, meaning the information goes in quicker!

  2. When the following week comes, attend the lectures you pre-learned. Use your now study-free evenings to do the following week's work, as you did the previous.

  3. Repeat.


The results of this are more accessible, stress-free learning, ability to keep up during fast-paced lectures, and a one-week buffer. Having a buffer means that if you’re ever ill, lose motivation, or just need a break, you have an entire week of lectures already done - meaning you can have some time off without worrying about falling behind!


Medicine and University Life

You already know that medicine can be time consuming and potentially stressful, so it’s essential you make time to experience university life on the side! Whether this is clubbing in Freshers Week, joining sports clubs, or finding a new hobby/society, you will need something to ensure you stay human - a med student, rather than a medical textbook. I found playing ice hockey and mentoring students from low-opportunity backgrounds through Zero Gravity was a good use of my time - I maintained a level of fitness, and did something positive that I enjoyed in my free time. On top of this, making sure you have a good circle of friends is essential when living alone, so you don’t feel lonely, and have people you can reach out to for advice, support, or a night out!


Apps and Websites I Used

When I was a Fresher, one of the key questions I asked the older med students was, “What do you use to revise, learn content, and test yourself?”. And I’m here to pass it on:

1. For flashcards: I use Anki. This free app allows you to write flash cards, which the app then uses to test you daily. If you find a card easy, it will test you in longer intervals, while if you find a card hard, it will test you sooner. This uses the ‘spaced repetition’ revision technique, which has allowed me to memorise pretty much everything from year 1!

2. For note-taking, I used Word, as it’s simple, and easy to use! However, many medical students like a website called Notion, where you can compile pages of notes onto a single document with links and headings, meaning whole years/topics can be accessed in seconds.

3. For testing yourself on pre-clinical, and clinical content: ‘Passmedicine’ and ‘Quesmed’ - these websites are both paid, but they are fantastic. These websites provide not only questions on every disease and module taught at medical school, but also have their own textbooks to back up their answers, which are often more summarised, and simplified than university lectures!

4. For understanding complicated content: ‘Osmosis’, a website which in conjunction with its own YouTube channel, uses animated videos to explain detailed medical and biomedical content, which can help to tackle the in-depth content which can sometimes hold you back, especially at the beginning.

If your university/friends suggest other websites, you should still try them! These are just what worked for me.


To conclude, when times get tough, when words appear impossible to even pronounce, or you feel down or behind in medical school, just remember these two things. One is that others are likely in the same boat, and the other is that there will always be a solution: part of being a doctor is solving problems which at first appear impossible - and that’s you! The big thing is that the positives of med school will always blow away the negatives, so go and enjoy the next chapter in your life, and don’t let anyone stop you from achieving your dreams!


Thanks Harvey - no wonder you're nailing med school! Want to pass your wisdom on to the next gen like Harvey? Be sure to sign up as a mentor to help the new generation of medical students break into their dream careers. Or if you're a school student yourself, you can sign up to receive mentoring here.


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Harvey Smith

Harvey has been with Zero Gravity since he was in school and is now a university member and a Zero Gravity Scholar. These days, he is a medical student at the University of East Anglia - and not to embarrass him - but he’s smashing it.

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