Today, we have invited to the University of New South Wales School of Medicine Bobo, sophomore, is also our Topone New South prep, Tutor-Ethan to describe to you, Australian Medical School of study life.
1. Resolve to learn medicine
I didn`t know what major I was going to study until I was in high school. I remember when I was a kid I wanted to be a doctor, but since junior high school, I`ve been addicted to electronics, computers and robots. In high school, I successfully joined the school`s robot community and represented the school in competitions all over the world. My team also became one of the Chinese teams in Asia and the world.
However, I gradually found that I was more willing to communicate with people and do my best to help others than sitting in front of a computer in front of a long list of code. Coincidentally, I met some of my parents` friends who were doctors in all the hospitals in Shanghai. Coincidentally, they all thought I was fit to be a doctor. At that time, television was also broadcasting a variety of medical documentaries, TV series. I gradually seem to return to my childhood ideal of becoming a doctor is what I should do. Since then, I began to pay more and more attention to medical information. When I was a sophomore, I had decided to study medicine at the university. After comparing the medical schools at home and abroad, I decided to go to Australia to take the medical college.
2. New arrival.
I finally chose the UNSW preparatory program, and when I applied for the UNSW, I already got the pre-admission of biomedical engineering, that is, as long as the score was (7.5), I could guarantee that I could read biomedical engineering. But if you want to go to medical school, you need to apply separately.
There are three criteria for application: prep score, ISAT and interview. So my preparations are also divided into three stages.
The first phase is about the first semester of the preparatory course, which focuses mainly on the study of the preparatory course itself. Medical school requires at least nine points, but at the time of final selection, it will also be screened according to specific grades, so I set myself a goal of 10 points. This process is OK, because other disciplines other than English are much less stressful than at home.
The second phase began about the second semester, when I began to focus on information about various medical applications. It is important to note that because medical school will screen the list of interviews based on ISAT scores and first semester scores, the ISAT test time (time chosen by itself, similar to IELTS) must be planned in advance. ISAT is a three-hour machine test, which is actually similar to an IQ test, with a lot of reasoning and reading on the subject. Because there is no professional knowledge, the preparation process has to be more general, mainly to do the official website and the examples given on the Internet, while the UMAT (local students of the medical school entrance examination) can also be used for reference. The main purpose of review preparation, I think, is to keep your brain at your best and train your mind to read and think under pressure. My exam is scheduled for October 7. It is more important to eat and eat than to bring my papers with me on the day of the exam. I remember that I had just finished lunch to take the exam, after three hours staring at the computer screen to do 100 intelligence problems, I came out hungry.
Assignment and presentation must be careful not to lose marks after about a week after completing the ISAT, when you can`t relax your pre-course studies during this process, especially in the experiment, assignment and presentation must be careful not to lose points. The English teacher in our class is famous for the strictest grade, presentation gives C, B easily, so I was still sweating when I was a presentation. However, although the time-out, but eventually got an A. Here is a suggestion that you can interact with your teacher in your usual English class and leave a good impression so that you can gain an advantage in the subjective score of presentation.
Back to medical school, after getting the ISAT scores, you can fill in the application on the Medicine website. In the process, you need to write a few paragraphs to answer questions, such as "what qualities do you think a doctor should have" and, of course, the "everlasting" question: "Why do you want to be a doctor?" After submitting the application, the first semester score and the ISAT results, you can wait for the interview notice. The tension of this time can come to an end.
I got the interview notice around the end of October, and the interviewer made a very friendly appointment with me about the time and place of the interview (in medical school). The next step is to prepare for the interview, which I think is the most stressful time, on the one hand, because my presentation of the second semester was just one day before the interview, so I was still very nervous to prepare at the same time. The interview will not contain any expertise, so the main preparation direction is about how to show yourself. Some medical school questions can be found on the Internet, my strategy is to prepare one answer to each of these questions, so that even if asked similar questions can also be easy. Also prepare your own stories or experiences so that you don`t talk about it in general and avoid being asked questions such as "what you`re most proud of". However, it is important to note that never write a manuscript, because it is completely different from what is recited and spoken, and the interviewer can see it at a glance, so a few "points" are ready to speak, and the specific language will depend on oral skills. In preparing for the interview, I also prepared some interview etiquette, big enough to wear (shirt, tie, leather, shoes, trousers), small enough to shake hands and make eye contact. Of course, these are not the key, but being prepared, giving the interviewer a first impression is important.
On the day of the interview, I arrived at medical school 20 minutes in advance, took ten minutes to relax my mood, and about 10 minutes in advance I could go to MESO to explain my intention. I was actually a little nervous the day before the interview, but I didn`t feel any nervous before the interview, and I thought it might be the best. After waiting at the door for about five minutes, an interviewer came out to pick me up in a room and the interview began. The interview will be about an hour long, and the interviewer will ask questions with pressure. That is to say, when you have a slightly longer pause, you will get to the next question immediately, whether you have finished speaking or not, so oral skills and on-the-spot response are very important. At the same time, we should also try not to mess at risk, the mentality must be well controlled. I ran into some novel questions like, "if your parents were here right now, what would they say about you?" the point was the same: don`t panic. The time for the interview passed very quickly, and an hour felt as if it were over soon.
At the end of the interview, the last piece of jigsaw is the prep exam, and at this point try your best to get the best grades. At the end of the exam, the prep career came to an end, and all we had to do was wait for the admission results at home. I have to say that the process was very painful. On December 22, I received an email from UNSW, and when I saw the headline, I realized that it would be my final acceptance result in this email, and I stopped at once. Nervously open the attachment, see Medicine next to the Program column, the moment, the heart of ecstasy, of course, all the pressure, all the smoke flies away. Next, it is time to welcome the medical school study.
3. Mind, medical school.
The first week of medical school can be described as a word: collapse. The pressure of study is several times higher than that of the prep in an instant. We need to do presentation, in the third week, assignment and groupproject.. At the same time, I have to face extremely difficult medical subjects, especially for me without a basic medical English. Each section of lecture, takes a lot of time to review the; scenario group (SG) (, or medical school`s tutorial, during the eighth day of the week.) you need to be prepared before class so that you can participate in the discussion during the class. The first anatomy class was really novel, and the first touch of the specimen was very special. However, a few lessons left behind only a large number of words and knowledge points that need to be memorized. Practical classes do experiments in physiology, microbiology, and histology, which are very interesting to me. In short, it can be very stressful when you first come into contact with medical school. After a few weeks, however, I gradually adapted to the pace of medical school and began to become more comfortable. But now compared to my current studies, the pressure at the time was not even much, so sticking to it was the most important thing when I first entered school.
It is worth mentioning that clinical skills sessions, also known as clinical technology, went to the hospital every two weeks in the first two years, mainly for medical history and examination. The first visit to an Australian hospital is a novelty, just like the TV series, where the teacher is usually a doctor in the hospital and teaches some clinical skills for communicating with patients (diagnosis starts mainly in the third year). The hospital team is usually 6-7 (SG 14) and is taken to the ward each time in the hospital and asks for a medical history or check-up with a teacher. There must be tension at first, after all, facing a real patient, and there are five or six classmates around you. However, familiarity with this will become a basic skill of becoming a doctor. In Australia, there is a great deal of emphasis on building relationships with patients, so everything you say needs to be scrutinized and you can`t miss out on the project, which is also very difficult at the beginning. Starting in the second half of the first year, each term (eight weeks) will need to do an SOCA or OSPIA, simply by finding a doctor to rate your medical history process, and the final score will affect the effective communication score in the portfolio.
When it comes to portfolio, it`s like a large file that records all of your assignment,project,SOCA and classmate / teacher reviews to check if you`re up to the standard in terms of the eight basic qualities you`re asking for (effective communication is one of them). At the end of the next year, you will be asked to write an article to "explain" your understanding of these eight qualities and "meeting the standards". Other examinations in the previous two years included EOC (examination at the end of each course, four), Practical (experiments a year, total of three general examinations for the first two years of the), EOP () and OSCE (clinical examination, at the end of the second year, at the end of the hospital) and OSCE (clinical examination, at the end of the second year, at the end of the hospital). A strict version of SOCA).
In fact, although it seems a lot of pressure along the way, but there is no problem after adapting to it, we even joke that we are gradually becoming "the old Youtiao of medical school." Today`s presentation isn`t afraid of even three a week, compared to freshmen; it`s easy to talk to patients in hospitals, and assignment takes less and less time. In short, there must be something to pay for.
These are just the tip of the iceberg on my way to medicine, and then I will continue to share them with you.
