OK, tip number seven which is of extreme importance.
I couldn't more highly state the importance of this tip. Tip number seven is...
What's up, guys, Kharma Medic here
and welcome back to another dose. If this is the first time you're coming across one of my videos.
Hi, my name is Nasir and I'm now 3rd year medical student studying at King's College London.
And once a week on Thursdays I make find you YouTube videos here on the channel.
If you want a closer look into my personal life, you, guys, can follow me on Instagram at @kharmamedic.
Anyways, let's jump into the topic of today's video, which is how to survive your first year on university or medical school.
I'm gonna cover everything from money to social life to studying.
So make sure you stay tuned till the end to hear my tips for all those different things.
So September is just around the corner and I know a lot of you guys are gonna start University.
I'm sure you're all very excited and long story short.
You're about to have the best years of your life and the challenge is gonna come in being an adult
and sort of balancing all the different responsibilities that you're gonna get when you go to university
and you're away from your parents and you just have all these different things to balance. That's where the challenge of University comes in
So before we start do leave me a comment down below letting me know what you're studying and at which university you are studying.
I'm interested to see where you guys are if you're watching my videos. I think it might be cool.
Okay, so my first tip is to make sure that you meet as many people as possible during freshers week or frosh week or whatever they call it out your university.
You want to shake hands with absolutely everyone, you want to exchange names and numbers with as many people as possible
because this is an opportunity where you're gonna find yourself surrounded
by other new students just like you who are looking to make friends
and the more people that you mean now the easier time you're gonna have
later on in deciding who you want to be your close friends and who you want to spend more time with moving forward.
The second thing that I want to say is try not to compare yourself to other people.
So I know when you're in a new environment and there's a lot of new things going on.
It can be easy to compare yourself to others who seem either more happy or more sad or who are studying more or less than you
and you really want to avoid that as much as possible.
You know university is gonna be filled with all kinds of different people from all kinds of different backgrounds
and as cheesy as it is to say each of you are going to be different, you're gonna have different interests, different paces of studying and learning etc.
So you'll all need to take your own path and figure things out for yourself.
Don't compare yourself to students that are getting A's in every single class or who are partying every single day and doing no studying.
You want to find your own balance and see what works for you.
Now the third thing that I want to say is to take advantage of the libraries.
Libraries contrary to popular belief are actually an excellent place to socialize.
They're an excellent place to meet people, to talk to people and to sort of break up your day of studying.
You can go to the library as a group and you guys can take your lunch breaks together your coffee breaks together, etc.
And a system - very good way to get your work done while also meeting people socializing with people, etc.
And that's always going to be so much better than sitting in your room with the door closed,
studying away by yourself as much as you can be out and socialize and meet other people I would highly recommend it.
Tip number four and this one is so so so important.
Please, please, please, do not buy textbooks.
Unless you really really love textbooks and you really really want to study from a textbook.
Please don't buy them.
Honestly in my opinion, they're very unnecessary.
All the information that you'll need to pass your exams and everything like that can be found in the lecture slides or on YouTube videos
or on free online PDFs that you can download.
If you buy a textbook, you're probably gonna have difficulty selling it next year because they always come out with new editions
It's just a whole mess that you don't want to get into.
Most textbooks that you'll want to read.
You can find online for free or you can find that same information in YouTube videos, etc.
And of course you can always rent those same textbooks from your local library at University.
So really if you can avoid it don't buy textbooks.
OK, my fifth tip is about money management now at university for a lot of you
It's going to be the first time where you sort of have your own budget and you need to take care of how much money
You spend on different things in your life, for example food entertainment travel, etc. You're gonna need to learn how to manage your money
So a good way that I did this was when I went to university
I kept a copy of every single receipt that I ever used and I had an excel sheet at home
Which I had split into different categories like travel
alcohol, I
Had the exhaustion spread into different categories like travel entertainment
university health, etc, etc, and at the end of each week
I would look at all the receipts that I go and I would plug them into my excel sheet so I could see where my
Money was going how much I was spending on food how much I was spending on travel and entertainment, etc. Etc
Now flat sounds like a super outdated and dinosaur-like way of managing your money. It's because it is nowadays
We have apps that can way more easily automatically. Keep track of all of your money and where you spend it
Record my video
Shh
so the two apps that I want to mention that
completely changed my life when I was learning how to track my money was first of all this
Nowadays we have apps that can easily
Automatically help you track your budgeting for example
Any of the online banks that are now in London such as munzo or revolute and there's a bunch of other ones
But the one I person uses mons
Oh and it's an absolutely amazing app everything that you purchase using your card gets automatically categorized into whatever
Category it is so for example
If I eat on at a restaurant that money goes straight into the eating out folder if I purchase something like on the London Underground
Or I take an uber it automatically goes into transports
but if you guys can't open an account with an online bank for whatever reason there's a bunch of other apps that allow you to
Track your money
You just have to input all of the different purchases individually, so it's manual and it takes a lot longer
But it's still a good way to track your money and the one that I used to use before I opened a bank account with
Ones though is this one here? It's called the wallet. Hopefully that focuses and you guys can see
Yeah, I used it for a while and it was very helpful. But again, it's manual you have to input everything manually
So it takes a bunch of time know if you're studying something like medicine, which is a very demanding
Subject you're gonna have lots and lots of lectures tutorials workshops, etc
Throughout the year my one tip for a subject as demanding as medicine is to really not leave everything until the end and personally
That's what I do
I do a bit of work every single day something between one and three hours and then when it comes to exam time
I've basically already written all of my notes and I just need to read them and memorize them and understand them at the end of
The day you are at University in order to study and get your degree
And so figuring out the balance between your work and your social life is going to be the most important thing
Okay tip number seven, which is of extreme importance
I couldn't more highly state to the importance of this tip
Tip number seven is to learn how to cook if you learn how to cook
you're gonna save a lot of time you're gonna save a lot of money and your body on your mind are gonna thank you for
It it's very easy on University to fall into the trap of constantly ordering food from outside or eat
The local chicken shop or whatever it is, you know, you can't do that
but you're just gonna end up eating a bunch of junk and it's gonna end up costing you so much money the best thing to
Do is to meal plan. I have a video about meal planning. I'll put a link to it somewhere up here
I personally really enjoy cooking and I cook on a daily basis
So I'm definitely gonna make a couple more videos on cooking and meal planning and stuff like that
Which I'm sure you'll find useful if you haven't done much cooking before okay tip number eight is talking about studying techniques
So when you're at university, you know
You're gonna start off with one stunning technique
Whether that's writing down on a pen and paper whether that's taking notes on your laptop
Whether it's using an iPad whether it's listening to audio recordings on your letter
You're gonna try out different things
And as you go through university, you're gonna realize that some of those things work better for you than others
So my tip is that you shouldn't be scared of changing your studying technique
Don't just choose one and get stuck in it because that's what you chose to begin with. You might find another studying technique
That works a lot better for you and a good way to learn about different studying techniques is to ask your friends how they study
So for example, I started off with pen paper and then I realized that I couldn't keep up in the lecture
I couldn't write as fast as the lecturer was speaking to me
And so I was forced to switch to my laptop so I could type out all those notes then I realized that I wasn't learning
As much and I wasn't retaining as much information from typing out on my laptop
And so I started writing down on a surface notebook
I think it was the surface pro 2 so it's really old and updated now
But that's what I started off using and now of course I used this iPad over here. Absolute GameChanger
I have a bunch of videos told me about the iPad and I'm gonna make a bunch more
Anyway, the whole point is that you want to try out different studying techniques
Don't get caught into the trap of just sticking with whatever you've been used to you might find something that works better for you
Okay. Now tip number nine is to please please please do things outside of your academic degree. Don't devote your life to studying now
I King's College London in medical school. I promised myself. I would have a very well-balanced life
And so now I have this YouTube channel where I spend a lot of time each week making and editing videos
I go out with my friends to bars or board game nights or video game nights or whatever. I play basketball once a week
I go to the gym and I run I do a lot a lot of things outside of my academic life and that's what helps
Me keep so happy in my life, generally
that's what helps keep my mental health really good my body healthy and fit and
honestly, that is what helps me succeed academically because when it comes time to studying
I don't mind that I'm studying because I've already had so much fun with my friends with the gym with exercise. Whatever it is
So what it's time to study it's time to study and I don't really mind and the last tip that I want to mention tip
Number 10 is to get into the habit of helping out your friends on university
You know, there is always going to be a time where a friend comes to you and says, hey listen
I couldn't make it to this lecture
Could you please send me those lecture notes and honestly?
I would encourage you to build a relationship
Where you guys can help each other and things like that?
Because there will come a time when you were sick or you had a family obligation
Or something like that and you're gonna want to ask for the notes from one of your friends to help you save time
And to help you move on and catch up with everything else that you have to do
So I really promote and I think it's a very useful thing to have a group of friends with which you feel comfortable and trust
that you can share your notes with them and they can share your notes with you at the end of the day if you guys
Help each other out you're all going to succeed and you're all going to do better
Don't be somebody who shines away from helping others and just keeps to themselves and keeps their notes to themselves sharing is caring of course
Within reason within people that you trust etc
So find that group of people and make sure that you guys help each other out
All right, and I think that's all the tips that I wanted to share with you guys today
I do have videos delving deeper into a lot of the topics that I didn't mention today
So if you guys want to check those out
Feel free to subscribe to my channel and you'll see more videos from me in the future
Please do leave a like on this video and leave a comment down below as well if you enjoyed and I will see you in
The next one. Peace