Don’t get me wrong, I love Medicine and being a medical student, but sometimes I just really want to hurry up and start working as a doctor! Some of my friends however, love being students so much that they’ve done iBSCs (which are optional at Leicester) to extend the experience. But for me, now I’ve got my first jobs sorted (academic F1 in Wales next year), the urge to become Dr Wiseman has become stronger than ever. Seeing as I’ve got another year of Medicine to go, I decided to compile a list of the top things about being a medical student. After all, I think it’s a topic worth discussing: when you went to your medical school interview they asked you “Why do you want to be a doctor?” not “Why do you want to be a medical student?”, yet we spend between four and six years in training before we become doctors. Anyway, have a read of my list and add your own comments at the bottom.

Year 2 starts with fresh resolutions in the form of more practical shoes. Pathology wins over most students but at the expense of their appetites. Perhaps pathologists spend too much time in the laboratory and hence most of their appetite killing inspirations come from the lunch box. An innocent breakfast of strawberries and red currant jelly are met with repulsion by those who cannot separate study from pleasure. Some never look at nutmeg and anchovy sauce the same way again. In fact, the connection between food and pathology is so immediate that students find it only natural to make up their own references like seeing “cinnabons” (my apologies to Cinnabon) instead of keratin pearls; a histological finding in squamous cell carcinoma. The depression induced weight gain of year 1 is quickly lost by the time Pathology is over, the reason being obvious.