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- Hi, my name is Lucky.
I'm a second year medical student,
at the university of Melbourne,
and today, I wanna show you around the campus.
Follow me.
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So, here we have a photo
from some of the original medical students
at the university of Melbourne.
We can see the skull and crossbones,
which used to be their insignia
before we got a little bit more modern.
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This is the medical building,
where we take all of our classes in first year.
So I'm just gonna show you around now,
and we'll have a bit of a look.
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Here we are inside one of the tutorial rooms
in the medical building.
This is where you'll spend a lot
of your time doing your CSLs,
which are case supported learning classes,
where you go through a particular case
and you learn about a disease,
and you discuss all the ins and outs of it.
You also have a class in here called PCP,
which was one of my favorite classes in first year.
So, this stands for principles of clinical practice,
and you learn all the things like,
how to talk to a patient,
how to do an examination,
how to reason your way through what you think
the diagnosis might be in this class.
I chose Melbourne uni for a couple of reasons.
The first was that, it is a purely postgraduate degree.
So this means that,
all of the resources are put into the postgrad stream.
Unlike other places where they deviate up
between undergrad and post-grad.
Another reason that I chose Melbourne
is because I'm from here.
I live quite close to the university,
which means that I can walk in every morning
when I'm here on campus.
And the third reason that I chose
the university of Melbourne,
is because I had quite a few friends
who are going through the process,
and they were able to tell me about it,
and tell me all the pros and the cons,
and it seemed like an incredible place to study.
And being here now I can confirm that it's
an amazing place to be able to learn medicine.
There are so many incredible things that you get exposed to
if you study medicine at Melbourne.
The teaching staff that we have
they all come from different research facilities,
or different hospitals in the CBD,
and they're all top of their field,
able to answer any questions you might have.
Additionally, the facilities are incredible.
We have a state of the art anatomy center,
which for me, coming from (indistinct) in my undergrad,
I didn't get exposed to a ton of anatomy.
So coming here, having the support
and having the facilities to be able to learn anatomy
in that subject, and to be able to see it
in the flesh was, a massive privilege
and something that's unique to Melbourne.
If you'd like to do medicine,
there are tons of ways to approach it.
The first thing that I'd say is critical,
is to make sure that you have some outlet.
So you're not just constantly studying.
It can be really easy to get caught up
in wanting to make sure that,
your studies are a hundred percent.
You're making sure you're getting the highest marks.
You're making sure you prepare
for the GAMSAT, the interview.
In terms of preparing for the GAMSAT,
there are a couple of things
that I found really useful both when I prepared myself,
and when I was helping others to prepare to sit the exam.
The first is to know
that it's not a knowledge-based examination.
It's a problem solving test.
So, practicing problem solving by doing questions,
by exposing yourself to different problems,
not necessarily different content
and being able to learn the ways that you do best,
to work through different scenarios like that is a skill,
and a skill that you need to practice.
So rather than spending hours
and hours on end reading through, different books,
or different chemistry, or physics,
or biology concepts, having that time to do an hour
or two a day for a couple of months before the exam,
just practicing problem solving with science questions,
with humanities questions, practicing writing essays,
and then slowly, slowly bringing that down
so you can do it under time,
gives you the foundations to be able to do the GAMSAT well,
finish strongly, and get a great score at the end of it.
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Social scene at the university
of Melbourne is really what you want it to be.
So for a lot of people,
they take a lot of time to join clubs, and societies,
and they find some friends
and lifelong friends through there.
For other people, especially in medicine, you spend a lot
of time in class with the same people,
and so you tend to make a lot of your friends there
and you might go out on a Friday night,
to PA's across the road for a drink,
or you might see them on a weekend,
if you're in here and you happen to be studying.
So there's really such a great scope
and opportunity to meet friends, make lifelong friends,
and to continue that through your degree and afterwards too.
So for me, I find that it's crucial
to have a balance in your life.
Just something that you enjoy doing,
whether that's playing an instrument,
joining clubs, seeing friends really often,
going to the gym, whatever it is that really makes you tick,
make sure that you keep doing it.
When you study through your undergrad degree,
when you start medicine,
and throughout your whole life, really,
it just keeps you balanced.
It keeps you grounded, and stops you from studying too much
and being caught up
in the trap to study all day every day.
Back when I was in high school,
I didn't actually think that I wanted to do medicine.
So having the chance to jump into a science degree,
and to work that out in first year,
that actually medicine was for me,
is something that I really love
about the post-graduate model.
I came out with doing some maths and physics,
some biochemistry, some physiology, developmental biology,
all these different subjects
that I hadn't really thought about too much
when I was in high school,
who really grounded me and set me up
to work out that A, medicine was for me,
and B, to give me that foundation,
to be able to jump into the course,
and to hit the ground running.
So if you're a student who's thinking about
studying medicine at Melbourne or anywhere else,
it's a postgraduate entry.
I really recommend that you have a broad base
and you try a lot of different things
because it's a lifelong career,
and you need to make sure that it's for you
and having the chance to do
that in my undergrad degree really, affirmed for me
that medicine is the right choice.
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