Hallo, My name's Sanjay. I'm a third year undergraduate student doing the double degree medicine program at the University of Sydney. Medicine for me, was never really something that I had a clear idea of, for a long time, until I really gone to high school.
I think for me it was a combination of experiences in which I volunteered a lot, met a lot of great people along the way at different places and from different walks of life,
And also kind of engaging with my passion for science by doing a lot chemistry, and physics, and realizing that some of the skills that you could take away from the sciences could be applied to helping people.
And so I thought, "wow, could I find a career as fulfilling as that?". Something that could blend together the idea of helping people, as well as using my science kind of skills and interests.
And so medicine really kind of naturally came to the forefront, as finally as the answer for what I was looking for.
So specifically why I choose Sydney was because it was a fantastic campus. The first time I walked in, I was blown away. In the interview period, when we kind of were shown around, buildings, and the lawns, and the campus in general, I was absolutely blown away.
I guess the second reason as to why I wanted to do medicine at Sydney was because it had this feeling of general connectedness between it's peers.
I could see that the medical students when they interacted with each other was so great.
They had all these little fun kind of vibes, and fun little kind of interactions that I think that I wanted to kind of mimic when I spent my time here at Sydney.
So medical students right now that are currently sitting the MD program do a four year degree where they will initially learn some of the foundational units or skills required to practice in medicine in years one and two.
So they'll do a lot of lecture based content, a lot of practical content, and learn from some of the greatest minds at Sydney Uni. And so from there onwards, they would do years three and four where they would start to transition to a clinical environment.
So in terms of kind of the clinical exposure, in year one, you'll spend one day at a clinical school and three days of learning on campus where you'll kind of cover eight systems of the body, so that might be divided in blocks like cardiovascular sciences, urology, gastrology, a few of those types of systems.
And so from there, in year two what happens is you'll be spending a lot more time in that clinical environment. So you'll be spending about 50% of your time kind of in that clinical school that you've chosen or that's chosen for you.
And so, from that you also got a few more blocks to kind of continue on, a brief refresher course if you will, in year two where you kind of go back through the basics that you've learned in year one.
And so I guess there's another emphasis with the new structure, in that you learn about a theme or a skill that you develop in one year and you build upon that in subsequent years.
And so the emphasis for years three and four, is that you're trying to transition into that clinical environment just like before but with that new emphasis on personalizing your own pathway.
And so what I really mean by that is you get to choose your own MD research project, where it happens, what you wanna do, what you wanna specialize in. (upbeat music) Well, this is Wesley College. It's a place where I've been staying for the last three years.
It's a residential college on Sydney Uni campus and it's really great to kind of meet new people inside, it's really great for kind of all sorts of extracurricular activities.
So I spend a lot of my time here. Every week, I kind of you know, meeting with new people and trying new things, and it's been a blast.
There's generally a lot of inter-college kind of competitions that do happen so we fight against-- well not fight against but we compete against different colleges in different sports such as cricket,
or tennis, or soccer, or different kind of extracurricular cultural events so, singing, debating, public speaking, come to mind.
So I've been involved in a whole range of stuff at the college. And I've definitely enjoyed every aspect of it. (upbeat music) So far at Sydney University, there's been a lot of experiences and a lot of opportunities to kind of get involved, meet new people, and have a good time.
So there's definitely a lot of opportunities in terms of initiation week or O week as they would like to call it, and there's definitely opportunities throughout the year as well to really bond with your fellow medical students.
So I know with the medical program here, there's a really good comradery between the students here and that's definitely one of the reasons that drew me to Sydney in the first place. And I think they really do that with a good variety of different societies that they have.
So the Sydney Uni has a medical society, that runs a lot of different events such as seminars, night events, conferences, different types of parties as you will, for people to kind of get to know each other better and begin some life long friendships.
So it's not what you're traditionally expect of a uni right? But I guess what we consider it to be is a really big cultural icon of Sydney University.
It all really started in the Vietnam War when students from the University of Sydney began to protest publicly and demonstrate their protests all around this tunnel.
Since then, it's been the heart of kind of iconic, cultural landmarks. As you can see around you, and it's definitely a place for freedom of self expression which anyone can participate in
So if you're sitting on the fence, wondering if you should do medicine, where you should do medicine,
I believe a medical degree at Sydney Uni can offer you that opportunity to really expand some of the scientific knowledge that you might be looking for,
it can really give you opportunities to help people that you may have never envisioned of helping before, and it really gives you that sense that you're contributing to something that is greater than yourself.
And I think that if you wanna live a satisfying and fulfilling career, one that combines these interests, then I think a medical degree at Sydney will help out.
