Jessi Taube, 20, is in her first term of an MBChB at the University of Edinburgh. She went to City of London Girls’ School where she got three A-levels in Chemistry (A), Biology (A), and History (A). She took a gap year in India where she worked in a hospital in Tamil Nadu.
I chose Edinburgh because I liked the city and I thought it looked like a really good course. Now that I am here I actually love the course even more than I thought I would. It is a good mixture of lectures and problem-based learning. We review a medical case each week, we do biomedical practicals and the aim of the course is to show us the personal side of medicine as well as the scientific side.
In a typical week we do a lot of work. We start every day at 9am and usually have two or three lectures in a morning, sometimes four. The lectures are an hour long and we are expected to take notes and read around the subject – for example today we had a lecture on female gamete production and infection. We had to consider the basics of epidemiology - how infection spreads and the problems associated with infection control. It was a pretty intense morning with two lectures and then a break, then another lecture and then a break for lunch. I take notes throughout the lectures
In the afternoon we either have a free or a practical-based learning session. For the PBL session we are given a theoretical case at the start of the week – for example this Monday we were given the case of a teenage girl who goes to see her GP after having unprotected sex and finds out that she has chlamydia and doesn’t want to tell her partner. We have to tackle each issue from a scientific basis, a clinical basis, an ethical basis and a psycho-social and public health basis. In the first lesson the whole group has a brainstorming session and then we spend four to five hours during the week researching the questions and then at the end of the week we come back together and discuss what we’ve found as a group.
As well as lectures we have tutorials, we do experiments and we have anatomy lessons. We don’t actually do any dissection of the human body ourselves but we have bodies that have already been dissected to examine. The bodies have been donated to the university for us to study and they are already cut up and preserved in formaldehyde. I didn’t think I would be shocked by seeing a dead body, and at first I was OK, but then when I held the heart in my hand I had to step back and take a few deep breaths. When you are working on the cadaver you have to abstract yourself from it, and it is quite weird at first.
We are looking at the physical structures of the body at the moment and we have body parts to examine in different stages of dissection. We cannot do any of the dissecting because there are not enough bodies donated for us all to work on them. In the tutorial there are about 20-30 students and we have four whole cadavers and parts of the body placed around the room. It sounds really ghoulish but you do get used to it.
One of the things that was made really clear to us at the beginning was that we have to be respectful of the bodies. We were given a really strict lecture on how to behave – you cannot be disrespectful and, for example, just pick up a hand and start shaking it, you would be expelled for doing that. It is all part of the ethos of the whole course – to respect the patient and I think we are all pretty aware now of how to behave.
The course is exhausting but I really love it. When I was on my gap year in India I worked in a hospital, which was an amazing experience but I missed my school friends and it is so reassuring to come back to university to study. It feels good to know that this is definitely that I want to do.
Living in Scotland and being so far from home was weird at first but my gap year had prepared me for being away.
I am making so many new friends, it’s really exciting. There are 230 students in my year, and in my tutorial groups there are about 20-30 students. There is a big mix of people from all over the world – for example in one tutor group there are students from Scotland, Germany, Zimbabwe and Northern Ireland. There is a really active social life here. I go out about two to three times a week and at weekends. I live in a catered hall of residence, which provides breakfast and supper so I don’t eat out a lot because I feel that would be a waste of money, but I do to pubs and we go clubbing and dancing.
I found the first week pretty hard – I came up to university not nervous at all and I wasn’t really prepared for the events of the first week – I am in a really big hall of residence and I think I just felt a bit overwhelmed by it all in the beginning, but as soon as I started my course and made friends, it all slipped into place. Best of all, I really love medicine and it has been a lovely turnout meeting some really nice people.
I chose Edinburgh because I liked the city and I thought it looked like a really good course. Now that I am here I actually love the course even more than I thought I would.
