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Action... Alright Andy... And three...Cut!
(Laughter) Starting...3, 2, 1.
I just finished my first year at medical school in the University of Manchester.
I'm here to talk about 'Freshers'.
The best thing to do is not stress out, cos you get certain people who want to do a lot
of work, and there's others that - you know - just want to go out and meet new people,
but you want to get a good balance between the two.
Two guys and two girls...and, erm,
together you form like a family...and you stick together for the entire course. During
Freshers Week they'll take you out, and show you what Manchester has to offer.
So I'll just take you through exams really quickly. You get two exam periods, one in January and
one in May, and in both of those you'll be examined in everything you've done in your
Problem Based Learning or PBL before that and there'll also be a progress test. Then
you also have practical exams in the May session called OSCEs, if you've heard of those. They
involve kind of looking at the more practical side of medicine, so you'll be assessed on
clinical skills that you'll get taught during your labs throughout the year, anatomy knowledge
that you'll learn through dissection, and also your communication skills that you'll
get trained on as well.
There are normally about 5 to 7 (lectures) and the majority of
lectures are to help you and guide you along what you actually have to do in the PBL, os
there not there to teach you each individual topic in masses of detail, its more just there
to show you how much detail you have to go into.
With lectures you have to really do
the work yourself in your own time, and they're only really a guide, just like Sabba said.
With PBL the main advantages are that you're with other people and you get to discuss what
you have to learn, and you get to throw it back and forth really, and that really helps
you set out your objective and really you can determine how much you need to go into
with that.
[CATHERINE] Well, the kind of for your breaks during the day you've got two
options. Either go to the Common Room and get something to eat from the cafe [LYDIA]
Which gets really full. There's always loads of people in the Common Room, so you can go
in and there'll be people you know, doing nothing for a while. [CATHERINE] Or you can
hardcore it and go to the library, which hass a great range of textbooks always available,
things like that. [LYDIA] Don't buy any of your books before you come over cos you won't
know what you want to use. [CATHERINE] Yeah, so it's best to look through those first and
have a good think about it. [LYDIA] I still don't have any textbooks and I did Pre-Med
so I've done two years here and it's fine, you just use the library books all the time.
[Catherine} yes, and then wih regards to when you're actually kind of in contact hours,
as it were, you'e got different labs - you've got the anatomy lab, you've got he dissection
room, which will be once a week for an hour or two, but you can go to there during the
week as well, so... [LYDIA] They have a histology lab with microscopes set up, and slides and
stuff, so you can look at those in your own time, but you can't actually go in to do like
with the cadavers...
I kind of had to live at home due to financial reasons. As a mature
student I don't get a loan from the Student Loans Company so I have to fund University
and, bascially, it saves me money living at home. I still get to attend everything everyone
else does. I get to go out with my PBL groups, you know. You go and do all the practical
things everyone does, you go on the PBL curry at the start of the year, and you know you
get to go to the cinema, go out drinking with everyone if you want...
I think at first that was something I was afraid of, but when you come in you see you are surrounded
by a lot of other graduates as well, so its...you know, you have graduate groups that you would
go out with and stuff, so it's not as daunting as at first. (LAUGHTER)