A Study Day in the Life of a Cambridge Medical Student

Hello and welcome to a study day in my life as a final year medical student here at Cambridge. Today is a Saturday and I have the whole day free for studying for my written final exams, which are coming up in a couple of weeks. Weirdly enough, I actually love having a whole glorious day clear for studying with no distractions or zoom calls, as it's a bit of a rare luxury for me these days. So today I am going to be having a full-on study day. I will be heading to the Emanuel College Library and studying there. My written final exams are coming up in a couple of weeks, so I feel like it's about time for me to get serious about revising for them. As much as I love studying in my room, it's a little bit distracting because I have a lot of snacks available in my room. They tend to grab my attention far too easily. So in the Emma Library, I will hopefully be able to focus a little bit more. So I'm going to bring you along on my study day. My plan for the day is to do quite a lot of PassMed questions. So PassMed is an online MCQ bank, and then also go through a couple of textbooks. So this is one of them I'm going to go through, the top 100 drugs, just for some kind of clinical pharmacology. That's kind of the plan for the day. So just to start the day, I've done my morning routine. I've gotten dressed into my yoga gear. So I'm going to do a little bit of yoga, some meditation, and then I'm going to get right into the studying. So let's go. I do my daily yoga and stretching, which helps me to feel just a little bit more alive in the morning. I'm just about to make some tea. While it's brewing, I will do my daily meditation. Then we'll head off to study. By the end of my meditation, the tea has usually cooled to a good temperature to start drinking. The weather outside is kind of grim. So I feel like motivation to leave my house to go to the library is at an all-time low. I'll see how I feel after my cup of tea. I negotiate with myself whether I can bring myself to actually leave the house to go to study in Emanuel College Library, but I finally muster up the resolve to pack my things and head over. As I know I'll be much more productive over there when I'm in the zone and not surrounded by very distracting, fun things in my room. I've studied in the M library every single year since I started my degree, especially spending a third year, which was my intercalated year doing biological anthropology. As this was a humanities subject, there was a lot more reading involved, so I spent a lot of time in the M library going through various books and writing my dissertation. The M library is really beautiful, with lots of different study spaces available, which is one of my favourite things about it. Today, I decide to go to the Fane Room, which is the largest room in the college library, with stunning high arched ceilings and wooden tables. It's the most traditional part of the library, and I love the studying vibe here. I find a suitable space to settle into, and I start out with some past med, which was my favourite study resource for clinical medicine. Next week, I will be placed on the cardiology ward at Papworth Hospital, so I decide to focus on cardiology for today's session. I do a few questions, and when something pops up that I don't know or am not fully comfortable with, which usually happens in almost every single question at the moment, I'll go into a bit more depth on that topic and do some further reading and quiz myself. I quite liked doing a read, cover, repeat sort of method for these. I come across a question about peri-arrest rhythms and ventricular tachycardia, so I re-familiarise myself with the treatment algorithms and watch a YouTube video which quizzes you on identifying different types of tachycardia on ECG. I always try to incorporate some kind of active testing component to my revision, as this just keeps my brain a bit more engaged through the active recall of this information. The best way to do this would be in theory to combine it with spaced repetition, such as by using Anki, but I don't have very long until my exams, so I convince myself that the effort of would be better spent on doing even more past med questions. I keep doing past med for another hour or so, and then decide to have a break and go for a little walk around college. Autumn has fully set in in college, and lots of the leaves in the paddock and around college are changing colours, and there's lots of beautiful yellows, oranges and reds as all the leaves start to shed. Then I head back to the library to do some more bookwork with one of my favourite books on clinical pharmacology, The Top 100 Drugs. I love this little handy book as it's all very much core high yield content, and it lays out all the vital information about each class of drug, including the indications, mechanism of action, adverse effects, any interactions, and practical prescribing tips. Because each section is very clearly structured, it makes it quite easy to attempt doing active testing on each of these sections, so I'll cover and try to recall the answers, and then check and see what I've missed off. And as today is a cardiology themed study day, I focus on drugs treating heart conditions, such as heart failure and ischemic heart disease, and any complications of these, and then notice that it's somehow become dark outside without me even really noticing. I reward my hard work by curling up with a book in one of the small cosy sofas in the library. I finish off reading The Course of Love by Alain de Botton, which is actually a very moving read. Afterwards, with my head buzzing with thoughts, I decide to write down some of these, which winds up with me writing a Goodreads review of it. I get quite into it, and also end up writing a review of another book that I read in the last year too, because I just felt a lot of book review energy, I guess. For the last few years, I always try to write down some thoughts for all of the books that I've read. This serves two main purposes. Firstly, I realise that, sadly, I've actually forgotten a lot of the books that I read in the past. So writing down thoughts after reading gives me a nice record of my response to the book, and it's very interesting to look back on, as especially if I re-read any books, I'll often find that my interpretation changes over the years. Secondly, it does also help me to actually remember, integrate, and apply what I learned from the book to real life. Having the space to sit down and reflect actively on what I've read is almost a form of active recall in itself, and consolidation of the main takeaways helps it to really stick. Finally, I decide that's enough productivity for one day, and I head out of the library. It's pretty dark now, so I pop by the supermarket to pick up some bits for dinner. I get back home and unpack my things. Unpacking my bag and putting things where they belong is a habit I've really worked hard to maintain for the last three years or so since reading Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Then I head to the kitchen with my newly purchased delicacies and start to cook. Today I'm cooking burgers, so I pop on my apron and get to work while chatting with one of my housemates. I dig into the burgers and wow, they just taste unbelievable after a long day studying. I hang out with my housemate for a while and then head back to my room. I brew some mint tea in my trusty green teapot. Mint tea is one of my absolute favourite decaf options ever. Finally, I do some light work at the end of the day, replying to some emails and messages, and just reviewing a couple of the things that I learned today from past med. I'm feeling quite content at this point and decide it's time to start winding down properly. Oh, light's out. So I've gone and changed into my pyjamas now, and I'm about to head to bed. It's been a pretty good day of studying actually. I find that I'm always a bit overambitious and I can always hope to do more than I actually manage to do in a day, but I've kind of reached the point where I can choose to be happy with what I've achieved. So I do my evening routine, including my skincare, drinking some warm mint tea and journaling a little bit about how the day has gone. Then I hop into bed to get some rest so I can hopefully wake up tomorrow and do it all over again. So thank you so much for coming along with me on my study Saturday. Let me know if you'd like to see some more study vlogs or real-time study with me videos as I'll be studying quite a lot these next few weeks in preparation for my exams, or at least I hope I'll be studying quite a lot. Take care of yourself and I will see you in the next video.