Summer memories

It’s almost the 5th week of the winter semester, and I’m done with five anatomy tests, and there are still more and more things to study. In this article I’m not going to complain about the difficulties and all the challenges we meet on a daily basis as a medical student, cause I knew that I would miss studying even before my summer holidays started.

To study medicine is such an interesting field, and there are so many topics that fascinate me in every subject. Therefore I spent the opportunity to attend a summer school at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands this summer. I was accepted to a course for medical students called Clinical and Translational Oncology, a course which was going to be focusing on breast cancer this year. University of Utrecht is a well known worldwide mainly due to many interesting and successful medical researches. It was even significantly positioned in Academic Ranking of World Universities 2013 as it came out as 52nd, which was one of my biggest motions for applying there.

During the whole course I stayed at a dormitory really close to a library, the university and a medical center. At first I was kind of surprised as right next to a modern dorm’s building, was a field with sheep as if I were in a village. After a few days later during my morning run, I even saw small rabbits jumping across the street in front of me. It was probably the moment when I realized that the Netherland is a country really focusing on ecology and environment.

We were in total 15 students in my course, from countries all over the world. I spent most of the time with students from Italy, Nicaragua, Spain and girls from China and Singapore. Most of the students were finishing their medical studies as they were mosly in their 5th and 6th year. But as the youngest student there, I can say that it was a great experience and motivation for me as a student to look forward and to keep my heads up.

Most of the time, I spent at the Utrecht Medical Center. We had lectures and some sort of practices there every day. Our afternoon program was sometimes enhanced by tours through different hospital departments or by discussions and meetings with doctors and scientists. Unfortunately I didn’t really see all the beauties of the Netherland, but I had an opportunity to explore the country during some few afternoons when I was free.

All the other students and I were during an evening studying topics we didn’t know from our studies at our “home universities”. During our last day of the course we had an exam; each student had to make a correct diagnosis to a real patient. My group and I were “surgeons”, and all decisions we made were of course checked and approved by the head doctor. Fortunately all my course-mates and I, we passed and therefore got a certificate and few credits as a bonus.

I can say that both the course and the country exceeded all my expectations, as I had a great and interesting time, made a lot of new friends, while I at the same time matured as a students of medicine.

 

 

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