Medicine distance learning, DIY third year

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.

The first exam was pathology, which consisted of 280 questions, and the second exam was pathophysiology, which had 200 questions. Student picked 3 questions in each exam and was to talk about the specifics regarding the topics chosen. The exam textbooks ranged from hundreds of pages to thousands, and the most difficult aspect of it was not just the sheer range, but the fact that we were supposed to cover the topics from the pathological and pathophysiological standpoint, but also from the anatomical, chemical, histological and physiological standpoint, which made it quite difficult, as it covers an astronomical amount of knowledge compressed into just 2 exams.

Before the exam period I tried exercising regularly and started playing American football, however, studying 15 hours per day and training intensively do not go well together, and that is why in the past month and half I have been just a boring student, which is usually the key to success when studying medicine.

On 30.6. I successfully completed my pathology exam after a month of hard work. Later, 13.7. I also conquered the pathophysiology exam and had exactly 20 hours to study for a last small exam, chirurgic propaedeutics, which is a formality, compared to the two previous exams. I started studying at 22:00 and studied all night, only to fail this tiny exam. It was a risk I took, and it didn’t pay off, nevertheless, I am unofficially in the fourth year, as this small exam is only a small bump on the road to the MUDr. title.

I keep forcing myself to read more, however, after reading more than 3000 pages in the past 45 days, I feel like It is time to put down the books for a while. With the following year we are finally going to look into the clinical part of medicine, which will be way more entertaining than the preclinical part of medicine, which is why I am excited for the following year.

More blog articles

All news