[Music]
hey guys welcome back to the channel if
you're new here i'm sebastian a medical
student from australia
and in today's video i'll be covering
everything you need to know about doing
an honours year
from what it is to why you should do one
i'll be addressing some of your common
questions about it
as well as sharing my own experience of
my honours year and some of the lessons
that i've learned
everything that i talk about is by no
means a definitive guide of what you
must do
these are simply my own opinions and i
hope they can provide some insight
and some information about what you can
expect from the year
what is an honors year honours is an
extra year of study
and depending on your university it
generally follows immediately after your
bachelor's degree
so for me i did a bachelor of medical
science which is a three-year degree
and you add a one year of honors towards
that to make it a four-year degree in
total
and so i graduated with a bachelor of
medical science
with honors and so what you can expect
from an honours year
is that you'll be encompassing some of
the course work that you did
and some of the knowledge that you
learned in your undergraduate degree so
whether you did business
science arts you'll be taking knowledge
that you did in the last three or four
years
and then applying it to a more practical
hands-on research project
and so for me i was doing a science
honours and so that means i had to do
more laboratory based stuff
but you might be doing an arts or a
business honours and that might be more
analytical or academic based things
where you might be reviewing a certain
topic
area and in order to complete an honors
year you'll have to do both coursework
which is your general assessments
presentations
and you also have to be doing research
work so that's doing the groundwork
going to your laboratory going through
your research papers
and it'll be a combination of both and
generally at the end of it you'll have
to submit a thesis
and doing an honours year offers a great
opportunity to integrate what you've
been learning
into advanced research training to give
you more practical experience in the
years to come
my honours experience i started honors at
the beginning of 2018
and the reason why i chose to do an
honours year was because i didn't get
into medicine a year before
i had one interview and unfortunately
that didn't go very well
of course i was pretty bummed but i'd
always had honours in the back of my
head in case things didn't work out and
so i decided to do a basic science
research project working in a laboratory
and i managed to find an amazing
research team i was working in a liver
research team
and my role was essentially looking at a
specific gene variant
that played a role in fatty liver
disease and i had to look at how this
genetic risk factor influenced disease
progression
or had an impact in some of the cells
involved and so as part of my honours
degree we had to complete coursework
but also research work and then you also
had to complete a thesis at the end of
the year
so for us it was a 15 000 word thesis
but it might vary depending on the
university that you go to it might be
five thousand ten thousand
twenty thousand and the majority of my
time in honors was actually spent
running around in the lab
and what i loved about it is that it was
completely different to the things that
i've been doing the year before
so it wasn't your traditional going to
lectures or going to seminars or just
studying in your room
i had my own little desk my own little
cubicle
in the building but then i got to go
into the lab which was right next door
and at the lab was when all the
interesting stuff really happened
so i was extracting rna doing pcr
analysis
i was looking at proteins using western
blot i got a little bit of experience of
flow cytometry and i spent a lot of time
actually handling human blood and
isolating macrophages on it because we
were looking at
how macrophages were responding to
specific reagents so if you're already a
science researcher a lot of this will
sound super basic but
for me doing this for the first time was
a really awesome experience
also just getting used to the whole lab
environment how
all the team operates so you have your
principal investigator or your PI for
short
which is pretty much the person who
oversees most of the projects oversees
most of the research
and gives you the direction of the
theory behind what you're doing
and then you'll have post docs you'll
have students
i was an honours student so i was the lowest
of low in terms of the most
junior person in the team you have phd
students
so you get a real variety of people that
you're working with
and you're gaining skills that are
really going to help you in terms of a
career later on
and fortunately like many of my peers i
graduated with a first class honours
at the end of it and i had amazing
support from my research team and from
the friends that i made during the year
but i'll touch on that
very shortly why do an honours year
so first of all it gives you a chance to
experience what being an academic or a
researcher is like
you get to see the day-to-day activities
and the events that you have to do
and that's not an everyday experience
when you go to university you're just
going to lectures you're going to
seminars
you're doing your study at home but you
don't get to go into a laboratory and
get sort of this work experience that
brings me to my second point you don't
just get to
see what working as a researcher is like
you get to learn all the new skills and
gain a lot of relevant research
training so i had to get trained on a
lot of the different machines
i managed to see how animal work was
conducted i got training surrounding
like how we'd even have to format and
write a thesis i remember there was a
lecture from a phd student on how to
format in word and i remember looking at
that lecture and being like
i don't think i really need to go how
hard can word be
but looking back it was one of the most
useful things that i'd done like
i was baffled by how much things you
could actually do in word
just formatting the individual page
breaks putting the headers the footers
making it all look pretty especially
when you have to write an
80 page thesis at the end of it 15 000
words
all that formatting helps and so just
learning a simple skill like
how to use word properly when you're
trying to write a big long research
thesis
that's super useful and honestly i
couldn't imagine what
writing an 80 000 word thesis would be
like
as a phd student so kudos to everybody
out there especially my mates
doing a phd currently and not just that
but it's the general skills about
critical thinking how to effectively
look at a paper and research and
reference and format that's going to
make you more employable that's going to
set you up for postgraduate study or to
get a job after you've completed it i
know a lot of my friends went on to
working as a research assistant
afterwards some of them are doing phds
now and then they'll go on to working as
a postdoc and moving their way up
science there's a lot of opportunities
to be gained from learning these skills
and that's not even just science that's
in any field that you're doing it will
just make you more employable by having
the practical skills and by having that
extra year under your belt another
reason is that you can build connections
and networks
so if you're interested in cardiology or
if you're interested in infectious
disease you might be wanting to work in
a research team led by an infectious
disease specialist or something related to
cardiology when you do that you'll meet
other cardiologists you'll meet
clinicians you'll meet researchers that
are in the field
you'll get skills that are relevant to
that specific topic area
and finally honours gives you the chance
to make a new friendships and to
create new peer groups honours is
a very tightly knit community there was
about 30 of us or so in our cohort and
you got very familiar with everybody at
the end of it you did all your research
together a lot of the people in my
laboratory team are some of my best
mates now
um you got to share your project
everybody's sort of with the same
mindset and
the same mutual goals and vision so it's
really nice to bounce ideas with people
of the same interests and the same
aspirations
how can i get started this is probably
the most common concern people have when
looking into honours for the first time
and i'll try to help you out with a few
questions that you guys have and the
first one here is how do you get
into honours so to get into honours you
have to apply directly through your
chosen university and in order to get
accepted you have to have a supervisor
that's happy to have you on board and a
project that's feasible to do within one
year
each university will be different and
i'll check the university website to see
what specific things you need to
complete
can you research anything you want yes
you can as long as it's within the scope
of that research team you just have to
make sure that you find a relevant
supervisor in that field
and depending on the topics they can
offer you you choose one that's going to
be feasible for you to do
how did i find a supervisor so for us
our university provided a list of
potential projects and then they
provided the list of the supervisors
involved and the research team
and so i had a look through what could
be potentially interesting for me
and i reached out to a bunch of
different supervisors and eventually i
found a supervisor who i arranged a
one-on-one interview with
and at the interview we got along really
well i also got the chance to meet the
bigger research team
and have a look at the lab environment
that i'd be working in and i found out
more about what the project would
actually be
so if possible if you can i'd suggest
organizing an interview beforehand
but not just organizing an interview
with the supervisor but seeing
who are the other members in your
research team because a lot of people
ask
what's better is it better to find a
really good project
that i'm super passionate about that i'm
really interested in or find a really
good research team
even if the project is sort of not the
most interesting thing for me
and i would say it depends some people
might really really value having a
fun research team maybe they're all
around the same age maybe
you just get along and vibe with them
really well and sometimes you might just
be really passionate about a project and
want to do it
so i would try to find a balance of both
have a research team that you're happy
to work with because you're going to be
seeing these people every day for a year
but also a project that gives you some
motivation and that you can drive
yourself to actually get up and do the
work
another question i have here is how do
you narrow down what research topic you
wanted to do
for me i only had about three weeks to
decide on what my
honours project was going to be because i
got my rejection letter from the medical
school
and then i had to sort of scramble
before the applications day closed
but unlike most people i just chose a
topic that was interesting to me but i
know for a lot of people how they scope
down the specific project was
they first of all addressed what do i like
doing if i'm a science student
do i like physiology do i like pathology
find out what interests you
once you've got your interest areas then
scope out what are the potential
research
projects what are the potential research
teams in those fields
and then once you found the research
teams in those fields then try find a
supervisor and a research team that
you'd actually get along with
how can i make the most of it so the
first question i have here is what can i
do in the first week
that i'll really appreciate down the line
and
my best piece of advice would be to
really talk to your supervisor about
what the rationale or what the vision
for the project
is what specific type of training that
you'll need
because depending on your laboratory
environment you'll have to get trained
and cleared for certain equipment
so you have to know exactly what you're
going to be required to do
know exactly why you're doing the things
that you're doing so do your background
research if you're trying to
transfect your cell line to upregulate a
certain gene like i was trying to do
and then not realize that the thing that
you're transfecting with can't do it on
those cells
you're going to be in a world of trouble
i wasted three weeks doing that do not
make that same mistake
and so you really want to know why
you're doing it and what you're going to
be doing
and if you can figure that out in the
first week and have your overall vision
and plan going forward
that's really going to make things clear
so that you're not wasting time and what
you'll pick up is that research moves
quite slowly experiments can last
over a bunch of weeks and in order to
get statistically significant results
requires you to repeat experiments and
make sure that you've done everything
with specific controls and in the right
environment another thing i'd suggest is
getting used to using programs like
graph pad
prism and spss to do data analysis and
to make your graphs later on
and getting familiar with programs like
endnote to make sure that you're
building your reference bank
with all the papers that will be
relevant when you come to writing up
your thesis
because i think i had about 100
references in my final
thesis and in order to keep track and
actually make sure that it's the correct
formatting according to apa
or harvard you'll need to be using some
sort of program because entering all of
that in manually would take an eternity
will doing an honours year help me to
get into medicine
so this was something that i thought
about some of my friends thought about
and i'm sure many other people thought
about
before starting honours and so will it
help me get into medicine
not specifically just doing honours is
not going to be like oh
he did honours i'm going to give him a
tick off so it's not going to help
directly but it's going to help
indirectly
because first of all if you did an
undergraduate degree and you didn't have
the best marks in first year or second
year because you're being a bit lazy
with university when you're applying for
medicine applications especially in
australia when it comes to using your
gamsat mark and your gpa
it will be scaled on your last three
years and so if you do an honours year
they'll take your honours year as your
third year mark and they'll discard your
first year mark
if you did a three-year degree for me a
first-class honours worked out to be a 7
out of 7 gpa
so it gives the opportunity for a lot of
people to boost their gpa when it comes
to medicine applications
another thing it allows you to do is it
gives you an extra year that's an extra
year to figure out how passionate you
are for medicine
to give you another crack at the gamsat
if you didn't perform well the first
time
and also just to develop skills to
broaden your horizon in terms of what
other postgraduate opportunities you can
have later on
so no honours is not going to be the magic
bullet that gets you into medicine
but it'll definitely help indirectly by
one giving you a chance to boost your
gpa if you weren't happy with it the
first time
and also giving you another year and
another opportunity to try
for the gamsat or to try figure out your
priorities for next time but just to be
clear no you do not need an
honours degree to be eligible for
postgraduate study in australia
you only need a bachelor's degree so a
bachelor of medical science
or arts or business would have sufficed
when it comes to applications
all your other questions is it as time
consuming and difficult
as everyone says it is and honestly i
didn't talk to that many people before i
started honors so i didn't
really know what to expect too much is
it time consuming
yes it can be and that very much depends
on how much work you're willing to put
in
some students might only want to do it a
little bit
they might go in four hours a day or
they might put in three hours
of research here and there but a lot of
other people like myself and some of my
friends
we wanted to do well we wanted to make
the most out of our project and so
how much work that you put in is
dependent on how passionate you are and
how willing you are
to put in that work so i treated it like
a working day i go in
at about nine o'clock and i'd leave at
about five and when it got to the busy
periods when i was trying to get a bulk
of experiments done
because i was trying to meet a deadline
or i needed to do it because a certain
cell line was
optimal at that time i remember i would
come in at
9am 10am and i'd finish at 8pm and i
didn't look at that as really tiring
work
a lot of times it was quite enjoyable i
was making progress on my project i was
excited for the results that were going
to come up
i went to dinner with my friends
afterwards in terms of the difficulty i
think the difficulty comes from
things that are new to you like i wasn't
used to writing a really long thesis
and so trying to put those first few
thousand words is really
really hard i didn't know what to say i
didn't know how to structure it
it was something new and those are just
skills that you build up and you get
better at over the year
sarah may says how to find motivation to
finish my thesis
in the last four weeks i have left well
first of all good luck sarah for your
thesis i hope you smash it
in terms of the motivation honestly if
you have some friends
try find a group i used to write my
thesis with a bunch of friends next to
me we'd all go into a library
and they just grind it out for four
hours five hours together and then we go
to dinner afterwards to at least give us
something to look forward to
has honours helped you in medical school
so far and this is a resounding yes
these skills about research about
looking at papers referencing critically
thinking
they've all been translated into medical
school and as part of my medical degree
i have to do a research project
so just being familiar with how to write
a research abstract
or how to reference or how to do a
scientific presentation
all of that is coming useful now and i'm
really glad that i did it and harvesss
says
is it fun and the answer to that is a
big resounding yes
it was a lot of fun i know there was
there was a few times
when i was stuck in the lab until like i
think the latest i left was
10 30 pm 11 pm and that is not the most
fun
experience as you may expect but overall
it was really something novel something
new to me that i knew that would help me
later on
i made one of my closest friendship
groups in honours and i still talk to a
lot of them some of them my best mates
and i met my girlfriend deborah who's
been featured on the channel in honours
she was working in the lab building next
to me and so you never know
what relationships friendships and
opportunities may arrive in your honors
year
well that's going to wrap it up guys i
hope you found the video informative and
it addressed some of your concerns that
you may have been having about doing an
honors year
and if you still had any more questions
please drop a comment down below and i
will answer them all
asap but if you enjoyed the video
remember to hit that like button and
subscribe to see more content like this
but thanks so much for watching and
until next time this is sebastian
stay sharp
[Music]
quick shout out to the OG honours crew
you guys know who you are
and i've been repping the watermelon
badge the entire video
just wanted to say thank you for making
my honours awesome
it honestly wouldn't have been the same
without you guys