UoM General Chat

[charmanderp]

Even more awkward if your not accepted....

Haha I hadn't even thought about that! It would be indeed.

One of the coordinators put it down to the registration being a few months ago, and every simply forgetting since. Apparently 20 people signed up for the session. Funny thing is there was a pretty threatening caveat at the end of the registration email saying that anyone who registered and didn't turn up wouldn't be able to sign up for any other information sessions for the rest of the year.

As a result I was pretty nervous I'd forget or something and it kept ticking over in my mind every few days after I registered. Pretty ironic in the end haha. I'm the kind of person who's awfully fastidious about everything to the point where I mark anything marginally out of the ordinary that I might want to or have to attend down in my calendar, which I check every few hours. Tough luck to the 19 people who didn't turn up.

I am the 5%.

It was good in the end though, had a one on two chat with the coordinators and pretty much got all my doubts cleared, as well as a few 'insider tips' and tricks etc with regards to planning the course, and what else the U21 offers for students to get involved in. Also managed to ask them some other uni-related questions (post-grad study, exchange, etc). I think they were happy with me for showing up so I got a bunch of email addresses for various faculty members around campus to direct other questions/favours to, and they said they'd put me in the database for the GIP so I could access everything regarding course planning and subjects and everything now about six months before I apply or get considered, which ain't half bad haha.

[Aurelian]

For Biochemistry, does anyone think we have to know the Watson Crick Model for B-DNA in detail?
-Most of the stuff they say is covered in the lecture, and I am not exactly sure what we need to know.

Judging from the MST questions, I would imagine that we need to know everything on the slides, unfortunately =/

[simpak]

Yeah, memorise anything on a slide, is my philosophy!

[Greatness]

I still don't understand how you guys manage to memorise everything on lecture slides! lol
I can barely memorise the main ideas.. haha

[simpak]

Hahaha Greatness, well I guess in mean in terms of stuff where they say 'this is x diameters' you just have to memorise it but by memorising things on the slide I also often just mean general concepts you take away from the slide...guess it depends on what it is.

Guys I want to stab myself in the eye.  It's been like a week of fierce internal battles and I still can't decide whether or not to apply to GEMSAS this year and applications close in like, five days.  This is so distracting ):  I'm getting nothing done because I'm freaking out 24/7.

[VivaTequila]

So the second phys exam was pretty fucking hard.

[seretide]

Hahaha Greatness, well I guess in mean in terms of stuff where they say 'this is x diameters' you just have to memorise it but by memorising things on the slide I also often just mean general concepts you take away from the slide...guess it depends on what it is.

Guys I want to stab myself in the eye.  It's been like a week of fierce internal battles and I still can't decide whether or not to apply to GEMSAS this year and applications close in like, five days.  This is so distracting ):  I'm getting nothing done because I'm freaking out 24/7.

What's to loose by applying to GEMSAS?

[seretide]

So the second phys exam was pretty fucking hard.

My asshole will never be the same again.

[simpak]

What's to loose by applying to GEMSAS?

MONEY, if I'm not sure I'm going to accept it at the end of this year, and stress.  I want to apply but I don't know if I want to wait until after honours.

[seretide]

MONEY, if I'm not sure I'm going to accept it at the end of this year, and stress.  I want to apply but I don't know if I want to wait until after honours.

What does completing honours bring to the table? Does that outweigh applying for GEMSAS?

[simpak]

What does completing honours bring to the table? Does that outweigh applying for GEMSAS?

It's less about what it brings to the table and more about what I want to do with my life, I guess.  I'm not doing anything here just for professional gain, I legitimately enjoy studying and learning and want to do something that I will enjoy.  I'm not all that concerned about adding extra time to my degrees or extra money to my loans or anything like that.  I'm just not sure whether I'm ready to make a decision about what kind of career I want in terms of medicine or research, so I guess honours would allow me to experience some halfhearted aspect of the latter and therefore give me a little more insight from which to come to a conclusion about what works for me (MD v PhD).  I am not sure that, if I were offered a place this year to a medical degree, I would take the offer because I think that I would be more inclined to accept Honours first.  Which makes me wonder whether there is any point considering it until this time next year, when I am much more likely to contemplate an offer more seriously and will probably have more an idea of what I want to do in the future.  On the other hand, most people would say apply and see what happens and then decide later.  But I won't want to reject an offer I only want 12 months later, rather than not at all.  If I did get offered medicine, I would be inclined to accept it without thinking it through properly because I'd be worried about rejecting the offer and then never getting another.  But that would force me to spend time wondering about whether I would have found greener grass had I done Honours instead.

Third year sucks.

[Greatness]

It's less about what it brings to the table and more about what I want to do with my life, I guess.  I'm not doing anything here just for professional gain, I legitimately enjoy studying and learning and want to do something that I will enjoy.  I'm not all that concerned about adding extra time to my degrees or extra money to my loans or anything like that.  I'm just not sure whether I'm ready to make a decision about what kind of career I want in terms of medicine or research, so I guess honours would allow me to experience some halfhearted aspect of the latter and therefore give me a little more insight from which to come to a conclusion about what works for me (MD v PhD).  I am not sure that, if I were offered a place this year to a medical degree, I would take the offer because I think that I would be more inclined to accept Honours first.  Which makes me wonder whether there is any point considering it until this time next year, when I am much more likely to contemplate an offer more seriously and will probably have more an idea of what I want to do in the future.  On the other hand, most people would say apply and see what happens and then decide later.  But I won't want to reject an offer I only want 12 months later, rather than not at all.  If I did get offered medicine, I would be inclined to accept it without thinking it through properly because I'd be worried about rejecting the offer and then never getting another.  But that would force me to spend time wondering about whether I would have found greener grass had I done Honours instead.

Third year sucks.

I think you should study honours It sounds like it's what you want to do! Considering you don't really mind how long you study for and you'd like to explore your options, it's probably the best thing to do.

[Shenz0r]

Didn't Russ have a bit of a similar problem when he was applying for MD?

I don't know a lot about honours, but maybe it would be easier to accept an MD offer and then pursue research after, if that's what interests you more? Because I'd imagine it would be harder to go from research into Medicine instead.

[simpak]

Greatness, I was leaning towards this and everyone keeps telling me to just do the MD because nobody understands studying for fun ;__;

Shenz0r, yeah he did have a similar situation at the end of the year, but he ended up just accepting the MD.
The attractive thing about Honours in this case, I suppose, is that it's only an extra year and it would still benefit my CV at the end of the day no matter what I choose to do.  For that reason and at this age I presume it's actually easier to go from Honours research to medicine relatively quickly than it is the other way around.  But yes, if you had started a career in research (ie done a PhD and beyond) it may be more difficult to contemplate an x long study period prior to becoming qualified in Medicine and therefore go from research to medicine.  This would only delay things a year for me...I feel I would have to wait some time before ending up in research if I did the MD first.  And then, arguably, what is the true point if you're just going to end up back there anyway and could have done Honours/PhD instead...

All of this basically is just me becoming overly cautious about future decision making following my Arts --> Science transfer.

[Russ]

Didn't Russ have a bit of a similar problem when he was applying for MD?

I don't know a lot about honours, but maybe it would be easier to accept an MD offer and then pursue research after, if that's what interests you more? Because I'd imagine it would be harder to go from research into Medicine instead.

I wanted to do Honours since I was interested in it and at the time it was probably a harder decision than it needed to be, but whilst I spent most of my undergrad not 100% sure on whether I wanted to pursue medicine or research, when I finalized my applications in third year I was definitely prioritizing medicine first. I also had to be up front about it with the people I was networking with for Honours, which was awkward in some circumstances; I had a meeting with a supervisor who had my dream project at WEHI (which he offered to me informally at the end of our meeting) about 4 hours before GEMSAS results were out

If you're not sure whether or not you want to be involved in medicine or a research oriented career, that's for you to decide. I had to make the same decision and I didn't feel it was particularly close for me. Options, prospects and utility of a medical degree seemed better to me and whilst I intend to acquire some sort of research involvement, it doesn't necessarily need to be a lab based PhD. Education and clinical interactions are both (overlapping) areas that appeal, so I don't think it's quite as simple as comparing difficult of getting into the research stream compared to the medicine stream.