Hello, everyone. Long time no see! Well only about a month, but so much has happened since I moved to Newcastle and started uni.
Ok, first of all, moving. Packing was an absolute NIGHTMARE; I found myself sitting on the floor in the middle of the night trying to fit things into boxes and decide what I wanted to bring to uni and whether anything in my life was worth anything at all. Advice to anyone wanting to avoid a complete existential crisis about packing for a move: START EARLY! Don't be like me and procrastinate it for so long, especially if you have more than just packing to do (life admin, etc). You'll save yourself so much stress. Surprisingly, I unpacked within just a few hours of arriving...
We had two weeks on campus before classes started. This was great and I can't speak highly enough about the University of Newcastle, the Student Living department, and the Residential Mentors for making us all feel very welcome and settled in within just days of arriving. Knowing people who live around you when you've just moved to a completely new city is really invaluable and helped me feel less alone. That being said, it's totally ok if you don't end up vibing with everyone who you meet on campus at the beginning. It's a good environment to meet new friends but you're definitely not going to get on super well with every single person you're around and that's ok, don't lose hope about making friends at uni.
I could go on about what it's like to move out and live at uni, but this is ATAR Notes so I gather you might be a bit more interested in what it is like to study med at the University of Newcastle. Please take this with copious grains of salt because I've just started my third week and there's twelve more to go so obviously I'm not super experienced yet.
So the way my first term is structured is like this: a 5 (?) week block of a general whirlwind tour through every body system possible, and then we jump into the cardio and respiratory systems. Currently I'm in the tour through the body stage, and it's really something, haha. Coming from having a biology and chemistry in high school background, I was happy to find that I already knew a bit of the biology and chemistry things (DNA replication, translation, organelles in cells), which definitely lifted the burden on me in my first few weeks a bit. I like how at my university they teach you this kind of biochemistry/purer science knowledge, but they also try to teach you some anatomy, basic clinical skills, professionalism that is somehow related to the biochemistry. So some context is provided, which I find REALLY helpful in getting me to actually...uh... learn things. I also love how we do so many things in either PBL or clinical skills in set groups, so there's a bunch of people you'll be going through (at least a term of) medical school with. I think I'm lucky that we all get along well and there's a good mix of backgrounds and personalities in my groups though; I'd imagine if it didn't work out it would be difficult to have to be with the same people for 15 weeks.
Well, you may ask, what is difficult about studying medicine? After all, I've just said a lot of nice things about how much I'm enjoying living on campus and my first proper two weeks of study. I would say that the hard thing about medicine is the sheer amount of content. Yes we have 15 weeks (I think we have a truncated Easter break, for instance) which is more raw TIME than most other uni courses at UoN, but the amount of stuff covered in each week is really something. I think you have to be quite dedicated in your study, but also strategic and (though it's cliché to say) really good at time management, or you'll definitely find it overwhelming. Another difficult thing to deal with is how much the timetable changes, and how short notice they give you before it changes (we had a lecture cancelled minutes after it was meant to start because the lecturer was not available).
One last thing: it is always recommended to get involved in things outside of medicine. So what did I do? I joined the medical society's futsal team
despite never really having played much sport before (I did run for 2 years though). It was initially a way for me to force myself to exercise at least once a week but I've really been enjoying it so far.