Closure of My Awesome First Year in Aberdeen-licious

Finally, I finished my first year of medical school. It was hard, I must say. So, what makes medical school very hard? For an obvious reason, I must say that medical school is very competitive. Getting into a medical school is already competitive, especially medical schools with good reputations. I guess what makes it hard is the fact that medical school is a centre of competitions, with those studying medicine are mostly top scorers, and those who are full of confidence. In my batch only, half of us are graduate/mature students with most of them already have a degree/master, whereas the other half is those who come fresh from high schools, but have a dozen of As under their belts.

Studying for the first year is tough I must say, the fact that it is a transition period of you from the so called memorizing technique of high schools. What makes medicine hard is also the fact that you have to know exactly so many things, not just memorizing them, more importantly to be able to understand the gist of the topic very well. We are not scientists, who want to know every single reaction in the body, nor the famous philosophers, who deal with creative thinking and ideas. We are healers, in which we deal with scientific and correct facts. Added to that, we need to be able to have great people’s skills, so that we can provide comfort to the patients.

In my university, they will teach you everything including how to greet the patients. So what makes it hard for me? I guess it is a simple reason of having an initial thought about changing my career – after losing my confidence in becoming a doctor plus seeing my potentials in other professions (as suggested by Zamri).

But after the hard first year, I finally realize that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’m totally geared up for the second year, Insya allah I want to be the changing agent to the world in medicine. It is still a long way to go for me, and hopefully my passion will continue to glow and blossom day by day

As I told Norain Ishak before this, studying medicine is like being in a relationship with your loved one. You cannot take it easy, otherwise your love will run away from you, nor being too hard on yourself or on the partner, because that will create a massive tension in both of you. Treat it like you know it will always be there for you, it is just a matter you making it more interesting or not.

To tell you the truth, for the first semester, I always study like I don’t want to fail and I always have in my mind that studying for medicine is the hardest thing. It never works that way. Yes, we have to be realistic and we need to know medicine is hard, but don’t always remind yourself it is hard. After all, this is what we want to do for the rest of our lives, and we don’t want to always be in misery

Getting a decent degree is our priority, making our own circle of friends from the same course is another thing. You dont want to end up studying and not understanding things alone.

Have trust in what you do, God will always help you.