Mikuláš Benda

The summer semester has begun, and I have so far completed 12 exams and credit tests, with 10 more remaining. The hardest and most feared exam this year has been pharmacology. It has been the last semestral exam, before my state exams in the 6th year, therefore a lot of importance has been placed on it. Pharmacology has 100 questions, and the number of drugs and remedies we had to learn resembled Yellow Pages. Fortunately, I managed to pass the exam, and I have hopefully few calmer semesters ahead of me.

Lockdown has arrived, and with it a partial lockdown of our university. I hoped that it would not happen, however, it was expected with increasing numbers of daily infected people in the Czech Republic. Even though medical schools were not shut down completely, as opposed to other universities, we are also experiencing certain quarantine measures. All lectures have been moved to a digital form, and all the clinical subjects are allowed with a limit of 10 students. This means that we do not go to university as often and have more time to study and prepare for the upcoming exams.

Third year, specifically this summer semester, has been one of the most difficult times in my life. Not only I was preparing for two of the most difficult exams on medicine, pathology and pathophysiology, but my studies were intercepted by COVID-19, which has significantly worsened my studying conditions. During the winter semester we were given professors, who didn’t have enough experience, or simply did not have such a passion for teaching. This lax approach to our education from the faculty side has decreased the knowledge we were able to gain from the professors; therefore, we were “forced” to simply study the subjects all by ourselves. A DIY version of medicine.

I managed to finish the winter semester in the first week of the exam period, despite having 3 difficult exams on the table, allowing me to have almost a month of winter holidays.

We entered the third year with a feeling, that we are getting closer and closer to practical medicine, hoping to better understand the healthcare system and hospitals. The winter semester began with great expectations and requirements from the faculty, just like it was during the previous years. Even though we do not write 2 tests weekly, I cannot say that I am getting bored. It has been little over a month since the beginning, and I have already passed a classified credit test and a weeklong microbiology seminar with a classified credit test. Furthermore, I have already signed up for 2 exams, with the first one being in less than a month, just before the Christmas.

The summer semester was over faster than I expected and the exams were closer every day. Winter semester was in comparison to the summer a piece of cake. During April, the second year students split into two camps. The first group decided to take on chemistry first, and physiology later, while the second group chose the opposite approach. I went with the first option, and took on chemistry first, trying to pass the exam as soon as possible, so that I would have enough time for physiology.

The winter semester took off in the same manner as the first year. They gave us textbooks and one of the professors said: “Yesterday was too late for you to start studying physiology for you to understand it and memorize it completely.” Not only was I shocked by what he said, but also because he was in fact right. Just like anatomy, physiology is a very broad subject. The number of things one has to memorize is quite comparable to anatomy, however, one also needs to combine and connect the gained knowledge, which is quite demanding. In addition to the previous subject requirements, one has to be careful when forming responses to the professor’s questions. For example, “will be” and “can be” are phrases which entirely shift the answer, for example when talking about blood pressure. Professors of physiology are well known for this verbal correctness and being precise in responses could mean the difference between a pass and a fail during an exam.

After almost 4 months of well-deserved summer holidays, which were approximately 3,5 months longer than the last holidays, thanks to my anatomy and histology exams, I again blindly leaped into the world of medicine. My last year's school responsibilities were histology and embryology exam and immunology, which I both completed in the first half of June. Despite the fact that 4 months of holidays sound like too much of a free time, the following school year arrived faster than I expected. This was thanks to the fact that I travelled during the holidays, specifically to Germany, Slovakia and Greece. Secondly, equally interesting activity during the summer break was my nursing internship in the cardiology department at IKEM. Worthy of a mention is also my contribution to the Portu project, which is an online investment company.

Despite being in the Individual study program (ISP), my summer semester has been quite packed with exams, credits and experience.

The winter semester has surprisingly passed quickly and quite smoothly. Past semester I have focused mainly on biology and genetics, because I was expected to pass an exam from the subject. This exam consisted of 134 questions split in triplets and pre-requisites, through which one had to go through in order to be able to attempt to pass. These included a pre-exam semestral test, as well as an exam test, containing questions and calculations. Because I am currently in the ISP program, I had only 3 attempts in total for both this and the following year, therefore there was no space for mistakes.

The cycle is repeating and I am again slowly returning to heavy textbooks and indefinite memorisation of medical terms.

The first year on the First Faculty of Medicine, Charles University is unofficially behind me, nonetheless, the “war” is still not over, as I have 2 more exams ahead of me. These exams are anatomy and histology.

Despite the fear, tension and oncoming dates of my exams, I have managed to complete the first semester at the First Faculty of medicine on Charles University. The most difficult exam I faced this semester was a biophysics exam. This exam is nonetheless considered to be the easiest one of the exams this year, compared to the anatomy and histology exams, which I am to have in the following semester.

After almost 2 months of my university studies, an immense amount of things worthy of sharing has happened. In this blog I am to briefly express my thoughts on the start of the school year, and the environment I am currently in.