I completely agree with everything that's been said here!
Coming into med at the start of the year, I remember being both really excited and afraid. Excited because I got into the course of my dreams and afraid because of the workload and possible competitiveness of the cohort. To say the very least, I was shocked to see that everyone was really chill and super supportive for one another! We knew how to work together but also how to take a break and banter (namely through our meme group on Facebook).
The faculty provide a lot of support too and really keep our thoughts and opinions in mind when designing the course (a perfect example being the decision to have Wednesdays off, except for assessments and placements). With our end-of-semester exam that we had last week, the faculty is open to taking out questions which we think teach a concept that hasn't been taught or is a vague detail - they emphasise how they aim to teach and assess only core concepts for our learning. (Btw we only had one end of sem exam while other courses, like biomed, had 3 or 4 exams)
The contact hours were something that I had to get used to for the first few weeks, especially since they were preceded and followed by a 45 min - 1 hour trip via public transport (which was another thing to get used to since I was always driven to school before). I could stay at home and watch lecture recordings online at twice the speed, but I go anyway because why not? While there isn't a plethora of practice material as there is for VCE, the second years really help out throughout the year with mini revision sessions and during SWOTVAC with their revision lectures.
There are also many different organisations which med students can join to pursue an interest (e.g. there's one for surgery, paediatrics, refugee health, global health, women's health, etc.). They mostly hold really informative talks throughout the year, but the paediatrics groups organise events where you can go to schools and teach the students the basics of first aid and the surgery group has a hands-on program where you get to learn about basic surgical procedures, such as suturing.
I'm not Lyra7, but I'll answer some of the questions.
Regarding accommodation, there's a large proportion of our cohort who live on-campus (e.g. in Logan Hall, Turner Hall, etc.) or off-campus (e.g. Mannix). Most of these people are either international, interstate or their house is considerably far away from the Clayton campus (one of my friends lives over 3 hours away, so they live on-campus and return home on the weekends). The rest of us either take public transport (especially the 601 bus running directly from Clayton campus straight to Huntingdale station) or luckily live close to the campus.
For semester 1, we had two placements: a GP placement and a hospital placement. With the GP placement, you're allocated to a GP clinic which is most likely not to be anywhere near your house (thankfully mine was only 20 minutes away by car) and you spend the 3 hours with your supervising GP in their room while being there with the patient(s) if they consent to your presence during their appointment. With the hospital placement, you're allocated to a hospital (as far as I know, most people went to the Monash Medical Centre or the Alfred). There's about 25 people per time slot and we were put into smaller groups, each group being led by a fifth year who took us around the hospital to meet with consenting patients. In my placement at the Monash Medical Centre, the fifth year took my group to the neurosurgery ward where we talked with and interviewed a patient who recently had neurosurgery at the back of their right brain. Both were amazing experiences!!
Both of these placements tied in with one of our major assignments, called a 'Case Commentary', where we have to take a full medical history of a patient (preferably someone who has a chronic illness) and write a 3000 word report on it. Most people were able to interview a patient from one of their placements and use that information for their case comm (my patient is from my GP placement), but the faculty gave us an opportunity to interview a real patient during one of our tutorials in case we didn't have a patient yet. We were also allowed to interview someone else we knew who was outside of placements and the tutorial. (Speaking of case comm, they're due this Friday and I'm barely halfway through haha rip cookie)
From what I've seen so far, it's mostly insular and I wouldn't say we have a lot of interaction with other faculties. A lot of the time you'll see us hanging around in the first or second floor of the med building, or in the Hargrave-Andrew library looking for a book(s) which we were meant to read as part of our lecture and/or tutorial prereadings (which no one really does anymore, except for a subject called 'HKS' or Health, Knowledge and Society)
I don't go to med parties (sleep >>>>> socialising), but I've heard they're pretty lit.
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