Where it all began...

So medicine, the cream of all courses, for all of us who choose this vocation, we couldn't imagine doing anything else, on average 15 people apply for each individual place, that's over 3000 people applying each year with only around 200 joining the year. Full of the best academics in the country, makes you feel proud to be part of right?! Well my story seems to be very individual, and although its obvious that many will have individual and interesting stories, mine is one which i hope will be both interesting to read and motivate people to reach for their dreams no matter what their age, background or academic ability. Im a 1st year medical student (this being my second time around...) and iv decided to set up a blog to show both the highs and lows of medical school! But first, ill get you up to date with how i got here! (Skip this post if you dont care!)

Well I wont bore you with the grisly details of my school days or childhood, but lets just say neither are subjects I speak about very often, and neither are things my now close uni friends know much about. One thing which remained constant from a very young age was that i loved science, more specifically biology. Whether i was collecting series such as the 'how your body works' series where my knowldge of red blood cells extended to little red men stealing oxygen from the lungs and giving it to everything else, having constant trips to science museums and actually enjoying the discovery channel, I wasnt yor average nickelodeon child, I was a geek, and proud of it! I would go into school telling anyone and everyone about the things i had learnt from my many books and trips and show people the pencils and other little things that I had bought from the science museum...as you can imagine, i wasn't the most popular kid in primary school but as a kid you get away with it! Secondary school was a different story.

Both my primary and secondary school, and even college, have not been anything to shout about, and thats being nice. I hear people in my year group saying they went to 'bad' schools, but it turns out they just mean state schools with the occasional chav, opposed to private school. My schools were always in the bottom of these tables created after the exams. The cool kids of my secondary school were the ones who didnt mind sparking up a cigarette in a classroom being taught by a supply teacher, the ones who had older siblings and family who were in prison, and the ones who had the most criminal convictions (these type of people being 99% of the student population). So to cut a long, boring story short, I got in with some wrong crowds, fell victim to peer pressure and my interests went from books and museums to cigarettes, alcohol and ditching school. Nothing of which i am proud of, Im very ashamed of how i was and i realise it is all inexcusable, it was me being weak and striving to 'fit in'. As a positive, i have learnt from my mistakes and it has made me a wiser person by realising how close i was to falling into a life of drugs, crime and unemployment (like many of my so called school 'friends' are now).

It was in year 9 when my science teacher saw my abilities in the subject and convinced me to apply for a scheme that gets 'underpriveledged' school children who show skills in science, and whom would never consider medicine, to become interested in the subject. I ended up being accepted into this scheme and it wasnt long untill i realised medicine was my dream job and my previous love of science started to re surface. The more i learnt, the more i realised that it involved everything i loved; science (more specifically biology), being able to help people, being able to apply the concepts of science to real life situatons, and I'll stop there before i start sounding like some over rehearsed interview speech or personal statement! But im sure most of you reading this can relate to what a perfect job medicine is. So to skip a few years, i started to realise that i was nothing like these people who i classed as 'close friends'. I scraped passes in my GCSE's, due to the majority of my time being spent doing everything but learning at school, but managed to get into college and start my Alevels.

I struggled alot at Alevel, and its clear that years of being a useless, lazy slob had clearly (and obviously) effected my abilities. As I'm sure many of you will pick up, my spelling and grammer is awful, throughout school science was the only subject (apart from drama and P.E.) that i paid any attention to, some how i managed to scrape B level GCSE's in both maths and english, but even now i acknowlede that i struggle with both. I only achieved two A's at GCSE, obviously those were in science, I talk to alot of people who give medicine up just because they didnt get 4 A's at GSCE, now i cant say what the requirements are for all medical schools, but I have made it, and I know lots of people who didnt get the GCSE's who are now in med school (although the majority seem to have straight A*'s and A's which is amazing and obviously a huge achievement for them to have!) so please dont give up if you are in that situation!

At Alevel I worked my arse off, having lost most of my previous friends (due to me being a 'geek' now...) I had alot of time to work and try to correct all of the bad decisions i had made. I made lots of friends at college who were all similar to me and motivated me to work hard! I came across lots of tutors at college who advised me against applying fr medicine, saying with my predicted grades and ability, i had no chance of getting in! I advise anyone to always ignore these types of people and jut believe in yourself, as you never know till you have tried! Anyway, I left college with three B's (shock horror) and yes, i did still get into medicine, which shocked even me! I was very disapointed with my grades as i was aiming higher, I can only assume i still got the place as my B's were all very high and the med school acknowledged I had my biology coursework cancelled due to someone copying my work and I got in trouble for plagiarism as the person claimed I allowed them to copy!! I was also very lucky to still be part of the outreach scheme that i had been part of since Y9, therefore they gave allowances because of that. But none the less, I have been very lucky and I acknowledge i am priveledged to be where I am now. I tried my hardest for those grades and so have no regrets in terms of the amount of work i put in.

The few people I have told about my academic background and the scheme I was on have seemed quite hostile to the fact they had to get A's and know friends who applied with A's and didnt get in. They seem to have the impression I have some how cheated my way in, all i can say in response to any of you who are thinking the same, is that I have made some mistakes, big mistakes in my life, but i hold my hands up to that and have worked so hard to try and correct everything i did wrong, I am clearly not the best academic in the year, most possibly the worst, however i try my hardest and even though my Alevels wernt the best, they were literally the best i could do, the medical school believed in me, so I must be half decent ey?!

So thats how i got where i am now, theres alot missing but i think thats all you need to know for now... You can follow my blog and see how me, a very academically challenged medic, progresses through the course!