a wee bit 'bout the course...

hey guys,

i guess it's time i said a little bit about the course, mainly the 1st year. the thing about cam as a med school, is that the course (as you've no doubt heard before) is very traditional in that what you do in the first two years is pretty much core science. even in comparison to oxford, i'd say the course at cambridge is prob more 'sciencey', in that we take each subject entirely on its own, with minimal integration. in english, that means that whilst in an 'integrated' you'll do the physical structure (anatomy), the biology (physiology) and the drugs (pharmacology) of the heart in one go, at cam we take all three of those subjects separately.

in the first year you do anatomy, physiology and biochemistry. i found biochem 2 b prob the least relevant, but many people enjoy it and then later go on into research, so i'll try not to b 2 harsh! anatomy is pretty detailed, possibly the most detailed anatomy you'd do at any med school, but it's really good fun, esp since you get to do dissections (not all med schools have licences to teach by dissection). physiology is prob the most relevant, but again we do it in a fair amount of detail, which i think is important if you're to understand fully what goes on when you get to your clinicals.

a lot of ppl come up to me and ask me about the supposed non-existence of 'patient contact' at cam. we do actually have a patient-doctor course, called preparing for patients (pfp), which runs in 4 blocks during the first 3 years, but overall it's fair to say that the patient contact at cam is minimal. not that it's a big deal really; at the end of the day during years 4-6 you have ample patient contact anyway! contrary to popular belief, it's not true that cam medics have less clinical experience/skills when it comes to patients. the stuff we do in anatomy for example is all clinically orientated, so we learn how to use stethoscopes and sphygomomanometers (the blood pressure thingies) to examine patients and their injuries in the 1st year without even being aware of doing clinical stuff!

anyway, i don't want to drag on forever - i just thought i'd set the scene a bit so that you guys know where i'm coming from!

kief :)

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introducing... me!

hey guys,

this is my first experience as a 'blogger', so here goes! my name's kirthi, but my m8s call me kief or keith for short, with other names including kezza, k-boy and kiefstar! i'm just about to start my 2nd yr at robinson, in cambridge. having spent the 3 months of my summer holidays (!) going out with friends, working a bit, and mostly vegging out, i'm kinda looking forward 2 a change when i get back to cam.

anywayz, i'll keep this post short n sweet. the 1st yr for me was really good fun, especially the first term, but the work was pretty hard (which was kinda what i expected) so i def made good use of the hols! 2nd yr if anything is harder, but the 3rd years say it's more interesting, so i'm def looking forward to it.. apparently it's in the guinness records for the most amount of info u've got 2 assimilate in any one year in any UK course, but i'm more inclined to think tht's a rumour!

hopefully add some blogs when i start uni in 3 weeks time, i'll keep u guyz posted!

kief