Live Q&A: Study Tips, Medical School, and Career Advice

I'm not sure if that's if that's normal can you hear me anyone around can you hear me hello hello Oh sick hello hi everyone how is camera and microphone quality just before we we do anything else those are things that I'm obsessed about SiC it also seems to be about a 10 second delay between me saying something in real life and then it coming across on here so that's fine cool I'll keep that in mind hi

everyone it's not Lee to meet you all yeah this is this is cool there's another live stream it's always a bit we're doing one of these because then like like people actually show up and that's just that's just really cool how do you study when you have several exams on the same day I'd kind of do it in order so like if I have one in the morning then I'll like do that the night before if

I have one in the afternoon then I'll do that in between kind of at lunchtime but it depends how confident I'm feeling about the exam if I'm confident then I won't work at all if I'm not confident that I'd like desperately try and plug plug the holes in my knowledge how was Germany Germany was absolutely sick got back this morning had about an hour of sleep probably gonna crash hard severely tonight what are you doing now

the exams are over we're doing our apprenticeship look so that's like six weeks in in a hospital while we're learning kind of the logistics of being a junior doctor so how to fill out all the varies and blood forms and this that and the other and the long side I've just met edit editing loads of videos which are kind of scheduled twice a week for the next few weeks which is which is fun Louie oh thank

you Louie that's very kind of you to say good luck at the gym Lowell what's your schedule like now okay now we can pretty much do whatever we like like apprenticeship at the moment attendance is not that mandatory but it's quite fun going in so how do you build up your leadership skills doing uni says Ironman by giving talks applying for president research projects is there anything you recommend doing it's more like just kind of seizing

opportunities that come your way and when you have a chance to get onto a committee and to get a high position or a committee you just try and take it and yeah giving talks is quite useful doing teaching sessions is quite useful that develops public public speaking skills and like confidence and all that stuff actually recall is a way of life yes it is wonderful Wendy officially start as a junior doctor official we start on the

first of August but in East Anglia at the region that I'm in the region that Cambridge is in we have to do a week of shadowing which is really useful so that's technically stalls on the 23rd of July so from the 23rd of July I'll be in the hospital do you still want to meet up in Cambridge yes absolutely random girl says hello hi random girl Tanya says how do you organize the handouts that you receive

in lectures I uh I like to scan them in into OneNote if I'm typing or into notability if I'm handwriting on the iPad should I get an ID part of studying yes you should if you can afford it they're quite useful but by no means compulsory I have trouble when I don't know what things are important there are too much low yield information yes that's why past papers are really good because plus papers are a good

barometer for what's important and what's not hi I'm a 12 year toast you don't I do a lot of work but only scrape B's and C's and I want to achieve A's any tips difficult to say really doing a lot of work normally means that if if you're doing a lot of work at you lots of hours and you're not getting the right results then you're probably doing something wrong in terms of your revision strategy you're

probably kind of just like writing out notes and summarizing topics without really understanding them I think the key to getting a good grade in like GCSE and a-level is to really understand the stuff such that you can explain it to a five-year-old and if you can explain your entire biology syllabus to a five-year-old there is no way you're getting a B NSE you absolutely get getting a nice talk if you can explain it to a five-year-old

so I think that's like one way of doing it any recommendations for the dedicated matching us Emily studying I don't really know anything about the u.s. Emily I'm afraid what do you want to do once you've done with uni are you interested in research or teaching etc I want to be a doctor I want to do YouTube on the side and I'm really interested in teaching so I wanted lots of teaching stuff is there a lot

of essay writing in the medicine course at Cambridge yes David there is there's quite a lot at least in the first three years so about two or three essays a week your active recall technique saved me this is I'm season oh thanks Maria glad you liked them how to use active recall for medicine unki thank he's good Jacob says I have an offer to study in medicine next year at Lancaster uni my bile a levels are

crap well good luck any tips for final preparation for those exams yeah just make sure you can explain everything like you know to a five-year-old if you can do that you'll be absolutely fine for the exam how do you minimize distractions when studying I actually embrace distractions when studying I don't regard studying as like I need to study and I need to be fully focused I kind of regard studying as like oh you know I'm studying

friend comes in we'll chat you know something happens will I'll address it I don't really see this whole distraction thing as a big deal oh my goodness okay stuff is scrolling fast any or what happens after med school what software did you use to make the writing appear on the screen ah I used notability on the iPad and I was writing and if you have a black background you can use the blending mode screen which gets

rid of black backgrounds and lets you look as if you're writing on like a transparent surface how's the fasting going gee it's going alright I've been using the travel exemption while I've been in Germany so I haven't really felt it at all John says for Cambridge what would essay titles for medicine be like for the essays you had to complete so for example if a physiology might be something like discuss the structure and function of the

sodium pump or it might be something like compare and contrast the different types of muscles in the body or it might be something like you ingest a can of coke which contains this many million hydrogen ions what mechanisms does the body have to prevent your pH from becoming deranged things like that Oh Damascus University that's cool thinking to shift to the UK what do you think yeah go for it if you like there's nothing like particularly

amazing about the UK I think there is very much a case of the grass is greener especially from like everyone in the UK kind of thinks the grass is greener in America a lot of people from not the UK think that the grass is greener in the UK so just kind of make sure that you're not kind of doing it for that reason it seems Oh Madelyn says it seems like at your college Akane with all

the medics do a lot of work together is it like this other colleges it seems like a nice way to get things done it's like this in a lot of colleges I think ours is particularly particularly friendlier and more like cohesive than usual than the average but for example Christ's and keys and a few others that I can think of the top of my head they have like quite a strong medic group and they work well

together from from what I've heard do you think at a young age you shouldn't be considering which universities you want to go to you can do what you like really I kind of had my heart set on Oxford Cambridge from quite a young age some people say that's bad but hey you know whatever floats your boat Harry says do you many people go through a medicine degree to be a paramedic because I think you had a

video yeah and no one goes to know one doesn't medicine degree to be a paramedic you do a medicine degree to be in like an emergency physician if that's what you want to do if you want to do the emergency stuff but paramedic is just not an end result of a medical degree would you continue with a YouTube channel once you graduate yes Jonathan I would love to that's that's the plan so far how do you

deal with bad grades oh good question I tell myself that I did the best I could or if I didn't do the best I could then I reflect and wide and do the best I could and I tell myself that ok these grades are not a reflection of me as a person and it doesn't really matter at the end of the day because no one really cares what grades you get if you had to choose especially

upon tops and gynie what would it be I used to be into plastic surgery before I decided on herbs and gynie decided this wrong word I'm still not quite sure but I'm kind of leaning towards that way why did you get your glasses from I got these ones from online they're like Giorgio Armani something something a or seven zero four zero and when my prescription changes whenever I go to Pakistan or whenever my aunt or grandma

come over they get me new lenses which is very no cover very kind of them because it's quite cheap in Pakistan quite expensive in the UK do fourth and fifth years medical students get better rooms no not really in fact mostly fourth and fifth year medical students get worse rooms our College is an exception and there are a handful of other colleges that have really nice rooms for clinical medical students otherwise generally your undergrad rooms are

better what area of the UK would you like to do f1 and f2 I'm doing f1 and f2 in in this area in Cambridge in the East Anglia region so I'm gonna be in Cambridge for FY 1 and then in Berryessa Edmunds of fy2 how do you deal with exam stress I don't really get exam stress at all like I can't ever remember being stressed about exams I feel like stress doesn't have any particularly useful functions

when it comes to exams the result does not you know dictate who you are as a human being like there's almost no reason to get stressed unless you're genuinely concerned about failing but I've never been in the position where I've been genuinely concerned about failing thankfully so I don't really get exam stress do you have the biggest room I have one of the biggest rooms in this house yeah I think Molly's room which is directly beneath

me is very slightly bigger than mine but yeah what do you do in the night before an exam it's kind of chill play a board game maybe plug some holes in my knowledge if I still think there are holes in my knowledge essentially like the closer I get to an exam the more I'm asking myself this question of what topic if it came up would I be least happy about and you know if I'm thinking oh

crap I don't know anything about electrolysis and if it comes up then obviously I'm gonna revise that the night before the exam but if I'm thinking off to be honest anything that comes up I can I can probably do it then I'll just chill the night before an exam what is your college in manual College is pharmacy a good career option yeah I guess I don't really yeah do you play video games no I used to

I had like a hundred and eighty days worth of playtime clocked on World of Warcraft but these days I think video games are a bit of a waste of time what made you interested says Tracy in pursuing a career in herbs and Ani essentially it was the placement that I enjoyed most in medical school and I did a couple of projects in it and it seemed fun and I spoke to some people doing it in Cambridge

and they seem to like it and yeah how did you stop yourself getting stressed at a level again like I don't really get stressed about exams it's just not a concept that's familiar to me in the slightest I think partly it comes from like an arrogant streak inside of me that thinks you know what I'm pretty sure I'm gonna do quite well in this exam at least that's the way I felt for GCSEs and a-levels I

remember feeling very vaguely I wouldn't use the word stressed but concerned about the biology exam because that was the first time the biology a level exam biology a2 was the first time in my life that I'd kind of walked into an exam not feeling 100% prepared for it but yeah I did all right in that anyway we all have different kind of sort of lines of where we think we are relative to what the bacterial postmark

is and all that Sarah says massive fan of your channel oh thank you Sarah that's very kind what's the coolest experience you've had while in placement probably A&E that's quite quite intense Annie what is your favorite doll I don't really know him much about specific dolls I'm afraid Miranda for medicine would you recommend applying to to aspirational you knees one solid one safe or anything different ah honestly it depends it depends on whether your aim is

to get into medical school or whether your aim is to get into this particular medical school so my aim was not to get into medical school my aim was to get into Cambridge so for me like it made perfect sense to apply to Cambridge Imperial UCL and then something else because the aim was always to kind of go for these top universities the aim was never just I want to be a doctor but if your aim

is I want to be doctor which is completely fair enough like I'm not like you know criticising that in the slightest then it makes sense to go for more safe options so it kind of depends on what you want from it I guess but good question I'm at Charlotte Adam Brooks say hi to her for me I will Bob Bobby she's coming over for a takeaway in a couple of hours time so now we're going to

be discussing some six minute stuff long so I'll haider for you how do you stop waste time in smartphone today what did you do at a levels I did biology chemistry maths physics and English literature yes and he keeps getting work experience with post-grad medicine which shadowing a nurse helped yeah anything helps really volunteering work experience you can literally do anything if you need GP experience you can destroy just rock up to every GP practice in

your area and talk to the doctors and be like hey I'm want to be medical student can i shadow you for a couple of days and they'd be like yeah go for it how do you study when you have 95 lectures I've never really had 95 lectures but you know if you have 95 lectures then you're studying during them hopefully you study for about afterwards if you feel like it if you need to advise for going

into year 13 [Music] okay if you're in if you're in sixth form or if you're if you're in GCSE my biggest advice would be don't waste all the time that you have because never again are you gonna get such a huge amount of free time to do whatever the hell you want in when you go to university the unit there there are gonna be lots and lots of things going on at university and you'll have a

lot less kind of free time to yourself unless you don't unpleasant all that stuff and when obviously when you start working you know gotta have any free time at all so when you're at school you have such a huge amount of time to get really good at particular skills so for me I spent a lot of time learning how to do coding I spent a lot a lot of time playing World of Warcraft I kind of

wish I hadn't I kind of wish I'd kind of started music earlier or something like that because that would have benefited me a lot more in the long run friends of mine who spent a lot of time doing music stuff when they were in school are really glad for that today because now they're incredible musicians and they've kept it going so my advice for anyone in school is don't waste all that time that you have use

it to learn skills learn things that you know are going to benefit you in the rest of your life rather than I don't know like browsing Facebook or whatever people do these days yeah what's the average pay for junior doctors it tends to hover around the 28,000 to 34,000 mark depending on what kind of job specific jobs you have so if you have very a very tough kind of series of jobs that require you to do

lots of nights and weekends you might be on 34,000 a year for f1 if it's quite sure you might be on like 20 for 26,000 years so it kind of varies how do you choose between courses if you have more than one in mind okay luck of the draw I guess that's kind of go for the one that you think you would enjoy the most and also do some kind of calculation about what you want to

do later in life maybe and kind of do it do it from there does it matter if I use American English on the B map no no one cares it's fine have you had a bunch of thunder and lightning today no Amy Amy Amy Amy we haven't it's been reasonably reasonably gloomy but not thundering or lightning what are your thoughts on revising in the summer holidays before doing a level maths physics and chemistry yeah I can

do use but if so you probably asking from the perspective of year 11 you're about to do a levels don't bother revising three levels in advance learn skills that will help you in later later in life yeah hello Dan this live stream has such good quality I'm Chuck sick yes that's what I like to hear a best way to learn new content understand it be able to explain it to a five-year-old how hard a second-year medicine

depends where you go depends what you like as a person depends whether you thrive on pressure it was probably the hardest year actually no I thought first year what I was harder than the second year first year you're still kind of finding your ground a second year you kind of know what you're doing so I thought a second year was slightly easier than first year why did you want to study medicine and become a doctor Sadia

asks I didn't really know what else I wanted to do really so medicine seemed like a reasonable option it was between that and computer science and I quite enjoyed like coding and websites and stuff and I was concerned that if I did computer science and that was my job then I would enjoy it less and in hindsight I'm really glad I made that decision because medicine is really really fun and if you're a medic with skills

in other domains like coding and stuff then you're automatically in like a different league versus if you're just like a coder or if you're just a standard medic so I think that worked quite well for me personally uh-oh what is your favorite color it blue I guess yeah blue hurry light blue say something in order what would you like me to say how hard do you personally think medicine is compared to a level sciences it's a

lot harder there's more content a level science is absolutely walk in the park compared to medicine but it's not in but like a level science is just as conceptually difficult as medicine is there is no difference in difficulty it's just a difference in the volume of content do you work by task or by time usually by task I don't believe in working my time as a first year medical student should I be reading student BMJ every

day how often do you keep up with known with medical news the student BMJ is quite good to read through I don't keep up with medical news that much I don't really keep up with news at all oh oops hello is this the real lives that was a fake version of hymns that came up before is it the real him is it the real oh my god its Apes hi its how are you doing long time

no see early are you fasting no not today I've got the travel exemption because I was traveling this morning so I thought I'd like you know snake fasting today I can't balance it what is he fake it's the real libs this is incredible would you perform abortions who the hell was the fake version of me Oh in the last livestream there was some guy called herbs mo who had your profile picture and he was like commenting

things and I we were all getting so gassed oh my god it was mo is here and then someone worked out that actually was a fake guy cuz his channel wasn't the same as yours yeah what are they like when do you finish exams I finished ages ago like three weeks ago four weeks ago three weeks ago something like that I'm just chilling now abe's when do you finish we should totes hang up do you have

a workout playlist I tend to listen to audiobooks who are working out what phone do you use either iPhone 7 plus do you go to the gym yeah I try how can someone afford to study medicine without any financial support what do you mean like Student Finance gives you I finish on the six that you come in two packs of garden-party yes almost certainly when his packs are gone party I seem to have missed the Facebook

invite would not miss it for the world oh so it's you're nearly finished then just a few more days all the best how are they going so far roughly once of course you do get in the be mad she won't apply for Oxbridge the average score for successful candidates is about six ish so the low six is so you know if you can get that then you're pretty good what did you get in your GCSEs I

got thirteen point five a stars the point five was a short course in citizenship law what time you wake up for nine o'clock lectures I used to wake up at like 855 for nine o'clock lectures because like my college and the lecture place were like right next to each other so that was the jet it's you should definitely do live streams yes you absolutely should other than on Instagram because he do on Instagram sort of alley

how do I stop limiting myself and what I can achieve oh you need to be a lot more specific because I'm not really sure what you mean best resources for clinical years of medicine I really like the book Oxford cases in medicine and surgery it's like a red one it's quite good are you doing a bit about notability at any point yes I will be it's it's coming soon I always say it's coming soon but at

some point when I have like a day to myself I'll film a video about notability and about how to use the iPad to like take notes in med school did you do a lot of essays as a medic yeah in first and second year we had about one or two or three a week depending on the week your first decile aren't you low I wish no I was not first decile in Cambridge are you studying front

textbooks or lectures do you do essays in medicine yes three a week what do you do when you have one of those days where you can't study okay if you're having a day where you can't study then you then you need to ask yourself why do you think you need to study I kind of wrote about this in my latest email newsletter it's like you ask yourself what's my goal and you ask yourself is taking a

break from studying consistent with this goal and if it is then take a break and if not then just kind of battle through and just do it anyway that's that's my two cents on that front what did you do to enhance your personal statement over the summer I did volunteering and I learned like close-up magic and stuff and that was like an interesting line item on it I hope you get sponsored by Apple Mull yeah I

wish I don't think Apple spawns as many people that like your voice thank you does Medicine have a high proportion of biochem medicine doesn't have any bio at all it's mostly chemistry at least in preclinical year you almost don't even need biology a-level to do medicine best technology combos for med school ah depends on what your budget is I've been using a macbook and recently an iPad I think that's pretty great combination if I limit myself

to believing I could get a grade see should I stop there I should always try to get a higher grade it depends on what your goals are really and grades are not everything but grades are a tool to get you where you want to be so it depends on where you want to be really do you believe in to-do lists yeah do all Cambridge medics do a-levels lose some do I be some do Scottish hire some

do whatever all that stuff yes the collaboratives would be amazing we've done two collabs already about revision tips but yeah I would really love to do another one I think he's gone now so I can say that yeah it was a really great experience learnt a lot he's very insight it's a very insightful guy and like yeah I hope he has gone cuz I'm gonna get him off a bit cuz like when you watch his videos

you don't like at least for me I didn't realize just how like insightful he was as a person because he's got this whole like you know the the charisma and the banter in the humor and kind of that's all kind of great as his style but there's also like is it like he was like really really like articulate or well spoken like knew what he was talking about very good at kind of teasing apart interesting interesting

things we were talking about this whole YouTube stuff and yeah I learned a hell of a lot so yeah how are you feeling about finishing Medical School it's sort of bittersweet really like medical school has been absolutely incredible but it's like one of those things it's kinda like undergrad like the first three years of undergrad were really really great but I probably won't want to do them again I'm really glad it happened but I don't want

to do it again Lala um sorry I'm just getting a message from Katherine she's watching this live stream and giving me advice some advice and what I should say oh right that's feedback about the latest video never mind what do you think of Durham University I don't know I've never been I've got a friend who went there he seemed to like it best three a-levels medicine biology chemistry maths oh hi Katherine how you doing are you

religious oh I hate that question I don't like the question of are you religious cuz what what does really just mean I feel people always have an agenda when they ask are you religious MacBook versus windows MacBook all the way advantages of iOS versus Windows or vice versa I really like mac OS I really like iOS I'm kind of very tied into the Apple ecosystem before I could afford Apple products this is gonna sound weird but

before I could afford Apple products I used to be very anti Apple I used to think that what's the point you know why would you spend 1500 pounds in a MacBook when you can get exactly the same specs for less than half the price if you go Windows and that was that was all well and good and I learnt coding and everything on Windows but when I got to university and my mum very kindly got me

a MacBook Air and then I realized that actually the the the user experience on a MacBook is at least at the time where where Windows wasn't that good was worth justifying the extra price and because I literally spend my life in front of a computer I think for me personally it's worth the extra expenditure of going for like the premium products like a MacBook Pro and like you know a new iPhone and an iPad pro nor

all this kind of stuff but that's because I spent literally my whole