Leaving Medicine

So here it goes I'm currently study medicine at university and I'm really not having the best of times, I'm not homesick, I know that I really don't like the University. The uni isn't for me the people are nice but are too different from the people I am used to being around and the city is way too quiet, it feels like I'm on a residential trip. Plus my flat only has medics that are international and a flat transfer isn't for me.

So theres the background so I'm planning to apply for medicine again this year now i know the deadline is tomorrow but I'm sure i could fill out the form as have done it last year. Now the only problem with applying is that id need a reference and also i would have to only apply for BMAT unis now as i only have AAA at level it will definitely mean i could only apply to a few.

(Now i really liked leeds and keele but didn't apply last year bc i was told not to do the bmat) I want to do this bc if i don't like my uni after I've given it more time i have the back up of ucas plus If its medicine what i don't like (the course seems very boring in terms of the science seems to only scratch the surface of a lot of topics rather than going into detail) i could apply to a couple of biochemistry courses for next year instead?1!

Summary

-Apply for UCAS for medicine and hope i get an offer worst that could go wrong is a waste of some money and time??
-Could I ask unis for a transfer onto their course for this year as only had a couple weeks of teaching??
- Have any other advice for my options would be great??

Thank you as I'm in a bit of a **** situation

You're just a few weeks in and things will probably change quite a lot. If the biggest problem is the people... You don't end up being friends with everybody anyway so it doesn't really matter if you don't want to be friends with everybody. I'm sure your med school is big enough to have even a few people you'd get along with. Join a sport, go to society events, spend time with different people even if you know you won't be best friends because you might meet new people through them. At least personally I've met the people I'm closest with by just doing the stuff I genuinely enjoy.

If you're basing your opinion on the science on the lectures you've had so far, I'm sure it will get better as the course progresses. At least at my uni we've mostly spent time covering the basics and making sure everybody's on the same page - you'll get to study stuff in more detail later on and especially in optional modules.

I don't really know whether you should apply but to me it seems like a lot of fuss (how are you going to get a reference now?? And explain to unis why you want to start again - I'm pretty sure med schools don't generally accept people who've dropped out?) to go through based on your experience of a few weeks.

Good luck whatever you end up doing

I would think very carefully about dropping out and applying elsewhere. A lot of universities will not accept students who have previously enrolled in a medical degree under any circumstances. I believe that would also apply to graduate medicine, so if you leave now, you could potentially be slamming the medicine door shut.

I think you need to first of all work out if you actually want to do medicine or not. Think back to what made you apply in the first place, and what you want to get out of a career in medicine. I find mind-maps are great for visualising this. Based on what you've said you don't really enjoy the basic science content at the beginning of the course. I can tell you right now that you will almost certainly have the same experience if you enroll in a biochemistry-like course for the first year or two. That's probably something you will just have to accept for the first year of your medicine course, but that will almost certainly improve if you wait it out and especially as you advance into more clinical-based years. Ultimately, that decision as to whether you want to wait it out is up to you and depends on how much you want to do medicine.

I'd recommend you arrange a meeting with your advisor of studies as soon as possible to discuss the problems you are having. It sounds like quite a lot of your problems are not related to the course, so I think it would be beneficial to try and diversify the people you interact with, whether through a sport or a club. I completely understand your issues with not really fitting in with the people on your course - I had the same problem when I did my first degree at university, but that's also because I was somewhat socially-inept at the start of my course.

There is a balance in dealing with that sort of problem. On one side, it's important to try and find the people you would normally socialise with - this can take a bit of effort but there are always like-minded people at university, you just need to make a bit of effort to look. On the other-hand, I also think it's worth trying to integrate yourself a bit more with your medical peers. Whilst it may seem hard it first, you'd probably be surprised to find that a few of them are in a similar situation to yourself. In my opinion, one of the most important skills any healthcare professional can have is the ability to relate to peers and patients that are from a different background to themselves. It might sound weird, but try and use the current situation with your peers as a bit of practice for that - you might be surprised how well you get on with them.

That was quite a ramble, but I hope some of it is useful.

I think your best option is to stick it out until Christmas. That's the advice I'd give to any university student, be it medical or not. Your first few weeks will be rough, heck even you first year in general could be hard, but you need to at least give it a go, especially if you are studying medicine. Go to society things to meet new people, visit your student support services, speak to your personal tutor. Also, as someone above me has said, try to remember why you wanted to study medicine. All the work experience you've had, the doctors you've hopefully spoken to. Spend some time figuring out if medicine is really for you and figure it out well because as has been said before, dropping out now is pretty much saying goodbye to medicine.

This is all too rushed. You are literally jeopardising your entire future (being a uni dropout is a big red flag for a lot of unis) because, what, you haven't settled in yet (after just two weeks), and you think the city (a city of 150,000 people minimum, which you barely know yet) isn't good enough for you?!

You need to stick it out and start talking to people at uni if needs be.

Thank you all for your responses I really appreciate the time you've spent to type it! I understand i need to give it more time but if i apply on Ucas i don't have to quit southampton it just gives me options and if i get rejected by all of them then it'll only be the money I've wasted really and I'll still have the place. If i get offers then i still have a choice i think anyway?!

I think one of the biggest parts is being so far away from home (over 2 hours) and I'll be this far away for 5 years rather than the usual 3!

Also with regard to if i really want to study medicine, the main reasons was that i like science and I'm good with people and i want an altruistic job but i also applied because it was hard to get into so i wanted the challenge of getting in which is stupid now. I'm don't feel its as altruistic as i hoped and i feel like its a very large amount of work which i perhaps underestimated My friend is doing biochemistry and tells me about her course and is so much more interesting at the moment but i know that I'm still doing introductory stuff.

I think one of the biggest parts is being so far away from home (over 2 hours) and I'll be this far away for 5 years rather than the usual 3!

I should have known from the fact that virtually the first thing you say is 'I'm not homesick' that the real issue here definitely was homesickness

Its potentially much longer than 5 I'm afraid to say - there is absolutely no guarantee that your jobs as a doctor will be within even 2 hours of home (which is pretty close and much closer than some others btw), especially if your family live somewhere competitive to get a job in e.g. London. I suggest you talk to someone at uni about dealing with distance from home, talk to family regularly over skype, and visit home a couple of weekends this term. You will get used to it.

As others have said, you've barely been there for any time at all; you can't possibly have got a good measure of the course or the city yet! Not everyone is going to love all of their flatmates (though you've not specified what it is you're not keen on, except that they're international..). You'll meet plenty of other people through tutorial groups/societies/lectures/student nights out etc; you just need to be a bit proactive in finding other people.

You also can't have any idea what the job is like in terms of 'altruism' at this stage either - even if Southampton is one of those courses where you get clinical exposure right away, that surely can't have amounted to more than a session or two yet. However, if living two hours away from home for five years isn't something you can reconcile yourself with, I think you're going to struggle further down the line. Although you can state your preferences, being a doctor involves being prepared to move up and down the country if that's where your career takes you. There are no guarantees that you will be able to live and work in your region of choice, sadly.

Thank you again! Looking back i do think homesickness is a big factor and if the other aspects of uni were much more better than it probably would be easy to manage with. In regards to the fact the you have to move a lot as a doctor I'm quite unfamiliar to how it works from fy1 phase. I thought you selected positions based on region and the hospital/the type of medicine you can do there (have no idea if its right). Family is based in the midlands near Birmingham would this be a very hard area to find work in? And other aspects of travelling is it required etc.

Im asking because if i continue to struggle with homesickness its better to be able to make informed decisions now rather than in a few years time etc!

Thank you again! Looking back i do think homesickness is a big factor and if the other aspects of uni were much more better than it probably would be easy to manage with. In regards to the fact the you have to move a lot as a doctor I'm quite unfamiliar to how it works from fy1 phase. I thought you selected positions based on region and the hospital/the type of medicine you can do there (have no idea if its right). Family is based in the midlands near Birmingham would this be a very hard area to find work in? And other aspects of travelling is it required etc.

Im asking because if i continue to struggle with homesickness its better to be able to make informed decisions now rather than in a few years time etc!

Not quite.. in your final year of medical school, your year-group would usually be ranked in order of average results across the preceding years, and then you're given points depending on which decile you came (maximum points if you're in the top 10% of the group, fewer if you're in the next 10%, and so on). That's then added to your final-year SJT results (and a few extra points for extra degrees/published papers), to give you a final score out of 100.

Then you and every other final-year medical student in the country will look at the 20 different deaneries up and down the country and rank them in order. Those who had the highest score out of 100 will be more likely to get their first choice, and so on. The bit where you actually rank your jobs comes after that - at that stage, you get given a list of rotations (blocks of three or six jobs, depending on whether your deanery makes you apply for FY1 and FY2 at the same time, or just FY1)!

All the details of this will have changed by the time OP qualifies, although I am sure it will still be largely merit-based (including UKMLE result).

Yeah, true.. though they have kept it more-or-less the same for about 5 years (or so I thought). Which has to be some sort of record.

Onpy because planning and implementing the PSA and UKMLE has kept them occupied.

To be fair it's probably a good change though. Maybe we'll even see the back of the randomiser aka the SJT, who knows.

Not quite.. in your final year of medical school, your year-group would usually be ranked in order of average results across the preceding years, and then you're given points depending on which decile you came (maximum points if you're in the top 10% of the group, fewer if you're in the next 10%, and so on). That's then added to your final-year SJT results (and a few extra points for extra degrees/published papers), to give you a final score out of 100.

Then you and every other final-year medical student in the country will look at the 20 different deaneries up and down the country and rank them in order. Those who had the highest score out of 100 will be more likely to get their first choice, and so on. The bit where you actually rank your jobs comes after that - at that stage, you get given a list of rotations (blocks of three or six jobs, depending on whether your deanery makes you apply for FY1 and FY2 at the same time, or just FY1).

So.. as you can see, there are a few variables involved in where you'll end up. I don't mean to suggest that you'll have no chance of getting your preferred deanery (though if I remember rightly, West Midlands Central is one of the more competitive places to apply, though the other Midlands deaneries are much less competitive, so you'll probably be fine if you only want to be fairly close to home rather than in Birmingham itself). Just that you have no guarantees over where you end up, so it's best not to assume you'll be back in the Midlands in five years' time. It is a long way off yet, though!

Firstly: again, its literally been two weeks since you've left the place and people you've been with in your entire life to date. Anxiety is completely normal here, and will improve with time as you become, y'know, an adult!

But to answer your question: Yes you apply to a region (currently about 20 'denaeries', then once accepted to a deanery you decide on city within that. West Midlands deanery is not very competitive and you will most likely get in. Within that its harder to predict and you may have to either live outside Birmingham or face a long commute. This is the website with how its currently structured, but obviously its subject to change https://www.westmidlandsdeanery.nhs.uk/foundation

Again: that's 5 years away. You are at week 2 now. Chill.

Thank you I think being away from home is a big deal and something I haven't factored in. Also i find the science incredibly boring atm so I'm going to give it until January before i make any big decisions!