The day begins with a 9am- Cardiovascular lecture. Some commuters have already been up for hours, coffee in hand to brave the crisp morning air and sluggish city traffic, but I’m one of the fortunate ones living near enough to UCD that there’s no need to get up before 8am. By which I mean the first alarm will go off at 8, and I’ll drag myself out of bed significantly later than that. Toast in hand, it’ll be another day of breakfast on the go.
The first lecture is a cardiovascular pharmacology one. Sometimes pharmacology is just learning lists of different drug names and their uses, which is as hideously boring as it sounds, but other times there is more focus on how the drug works. Today is one of those days, which is great because if you understand the process, there’s very little learning involved. If you don’t, well I’m afraid it’s to the library with you!
Next up is Disability. So far, UCD is the only medical school in the country to have introduced this as a mandatory module for all students. With hugely varied topics, field trips to the National Rehabilitation Hospital, patient contact and guest lecturers form a variety of fields and specialties, it really brings together multiple aspects in the field of disability. Everything from the history and policies surrounding disability in Ireland, to spinal injuries, speech and language therapies, deafness, back pain, rehabilitation and everything in between.
Despite the relatively early start, today is a light day for lectures, and we’re done for the day already! In earlier years we would have had more hours with labs and computer-aided classes, and in later years will have clinical skills to fill our time, but for now there are very little extras. Some 300+ students (including both the Graduate and Undergraduate classes, and sometimes the Bio-meds too) file out of the lectures and congregate in the hallways for post-lecture chats, and inevitably migrate towards the nearest source of food: the aptly named Pulse cafe.
Unfortunately, just because we don’t have a huge number of hours this year doesn’t mean we don’t have work to do, and it’s off to the library we go. The afternoon is spent slogging through pathology and pharmacology textbooks trying to get up to speed with notes. The joys.
But! It’s not all doom and gloom! Contrary to popular belief, med students can still have a life outside of college (albeit less and less as time goes on, but such is true of any degree). Tonight, Med Soc have organised their annual ‘Scrub Crawl’ around town. Basically the same as any other pub crawl, but whilst wearing scrubs. There’s a bus organised to take the 150 med students from UCD into town, swimming in their L sized disposable scrubs. The night brings us to two pubs and ends at a nightclub. It’s a well deserved chance to relax and hang out with classmates outside of college, and to meet the meds from other year-groups as well.
It’s a good night, and everyone comes home in high spirits, though exhausted and eagerly anticipating sleep. Tomorrow lectures start at 9 am, and we have a 20% genetics assignment due – but sure that’s another day.
