year 3, term 3 essentials

This term was purely exam focussed - we were reliably informed that our exams would be pitched at the level of final year (even though we were currently penultimate year students!) so cue a lot of stress and hard work. I'd been working hard from the beginning of the year though so I just kept that up and by the time exams arrived, I didn't feel as nervous as I had been in previous years. However, this year has made me realise that I perhaps worked a bit too hard. If it's paid off, I've vowed to take final year a lot easier!

Anyway, my essentials:

Clairefontaine A5 Notebook - this notebook is a fairly recent addition but it saw an awful lot of use this term. It is lightweight but also has 192 pages of fountain pen friendly paper. I'll talk about it in more detail in due course :)

Hobonichi Techo - Again, lightweight, small and fountain pen friendly. This featured permanently in my placement bag that I tote around with me on the wards, in clinics and theatre.

Post-it notes - Exam time means that the right hand side of my desk is filled with a vertical line of post-it notes that feature things to look up, things to do and food shopping lists. Now that exams are done, there is only a lone post-it note with a short to-do list.

Lamy Safari - My go-to pen for when I know I'll be taking copious notes. The dark lilac saw a lot of use this term!

Mizon All in One Snail Repair Cream - Snail cream?! Sounds disgusting and as someone who isn't particularly fond of them, it took me a while before taking the plunge to try this cream out. It really does live up to the hype though - my skin is looking so much brighter and feels so much smoother after just two months' of use! No break outs either (my skin loves breaking out when using new products) and it has helped my skin recover quicker from those exam stress blemishes too.

Clinique Anti-Blemish Solutions Clinical Clearing Gel - Again, those pesky exam stress breakouts. Though not the best thing to be putting on your skin, I used it from time to time when I had a particularly angry blemish coming up.

Diprobase Cream - Being on the wards --> alcohol gel use between seeing patients --> dry hands --> cracked hands --> sad Angela. Diprobase has been a life safer for my dry hands and at just under £3 a tube, it is much better value than any other high-street brand cream. If only the packaging was a bit more appealing, eh?!

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So there you have it, year 3, term 3's essentials. As results day draws nearer (27th!), I can feel the anxiety build but also know that it is fruitless to worry as what's done is done... Right?!

year three: term two essentials

Third year is going by too quickly - I can't believe I'm 2/3 of the way through my penultimate year and before long, exams pending, I'll be 3/4 of the way through medical school. I definitely feel like I'm doing something I love with medicine and I don't regret choosing this journey. It's not been an easy one, that's for sure, and (without going into too much detail) balancing everything has made me grow up a lot and also made me a better student for sure.

Anyway, enough sentimental talk! Onto this term's essentials. I've mainly been on surgery (with the exception of a few weeks' where I was finishing paediatrics, had a week of palliative care and also a week of lectures).

From right to left: Hobonichi Techo, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Surgery, Diamine blue-black ink, Pilot Vanishing Point in Raden, Lamy Safari in Coral.

I've barely had time to study this term but fortunately, I'd done most of the hard work prior to this so all my revision notes are in place. My Hobonichi has been priceless in organising my daily and weekly timetables (really important for surgery as we have to keep a log book that gets handed into the admin people at university) and I love how well the Tomoe River paper takes fountain pen.

The Oxford Handbook has been super helpful when in clinic and when I urgently need to look something up! In terms of stationery, I've gone through a fair bit of Diamine Blue-Black ink this term too (I think it might be my favourite ink out of all the ones I've tried). My Lamy Safari and Pilot VP have seen the most use out of all my pens this term too.

I've managed to keep up journaling at least once a week so far this year. This journal my sister got me for Christmas has been great - the paper takes fountain pen extremely well and the prettiness of it makes journaling a pleasure. My go-to pen for writing in it is my TWSBI 580AL.

Finally, I definitely don't drink enough whilst on placement and these Bkr bottles are helping me improve on this. Each of them hold 500ml - one comes with me everywhere I go (clinic, ward round, etc) and the other one goes in my main bag. I know I said I would review these bottles and I promise I will soon!

That's pretty much it for my second term - it's just flown by and knowing that I'll be a doctor next year is a scary but exciting thought!

year three: term one essentials

First of all, M E R R Y   C H R I S T M A S ! I hope you all have a lovely festive period full of good food and plenty of laughter :)

This term's essentials were quite random and it's weird being on placement all the time without lectures that involve the whole year group.

Stationery

This term was all about fountain pens when writing up notes and cheap biros when on placement on the wards/in clinic. Seen above are the ones that saw the most use (two of which have yet to be introduced on this blog - coming soon in 2016!) - Pelikan M400 Tortoiseshell, TWSBI 580AL in purple, Platinum 3776 Century Nice, Pilot VP Raden, Lamy Safari and Pilot Kakuno. 

On placement, these A6 notebooks have been invaluable. The Iconic essay books have plenty of capacity and are light enough (and small enough) to fit into a few of my clothes pockets. They also look super cute though it does mean I do get asked if I'm French from time to time (I'm not).

When it comes to writing up my notes, I use A4 notebooks and these Oxford ones are amazing. The paper is ridiculously good - they take fountain pen ink like a dream and they're not even that expensive. Perfect for students :)

Other

Having got braces, sweet things are a bit of a no-no (though I do occasionally cheat and then brush my teeth straight after) so I've taken to eating dark chocolate (a friend recommended the Sainsbury's one as the best dark chocolate he'd ever tasted) and two clementines a day. A great combo now that it's Christmas?!

Not the trendiest term when it comes to essentials but that's what happens when you get thrown in the deep end of clinical years as a medical student. ;)

Hopefully next term will be far more interesting! What's been essential to you during this autumn and winter?

year two, term three essentials

EDIT: I just realised I've written two of these! (One earlier this month). I guess this post is more of my exam essentials and the other one was more of a project essentials. How weird!

Technically, there wasn't a term three in my second year but for the sake of my sanity, I pretended there was one anyway (with the Easter four day weekend being the separating point of term two and three). Term three was pretty much exam time and project time so my essentials are quite study and comfort oriented.

Exercise Books

Earlier this month, I talked about how I use my notebooks and one of the things I used them for this term included practice papers and writing rough notes in a quick and cursive scrawl. The ones shown above are from Artbox (the three from the left) and Semikolon (just the one on the right). Exercise books are cheap and cheerful and the lack of pages in them make them easy to carry around in my bag to university.

Pens

From top to bottom: Pilot Coleto, Pilot Kakuno in Fine, Zebra Mildliner, Kaweco Skyline Sport, Lamy Safari.

I used fountain pens a lot during revision because to me, they are more of a luxury pen than a gel pen or a biro. Also, look how cheerful the colours of their barrels are?! They were exactly what I needed during a tough and intense revision period. The Kaweco Skyline Sport is a new addition after a friend recommended it to me in March and I gushed about it earlier this month.

Now that there are three fountain pens in my stationery arsenal, I kind of want to try others but I just don't see a use for more expensive versions of them. Especially as I've lost a few pens already when running around on placement - but luckily only cheap biros (though I did also lose a Muji gel but they're not that expensive to replace). 

Comfort Clothes

I spent a lot of this term in sweatpants or sweatshorts and I have no regrets. Studying calls for slubby tanks and comfy loungewear because of how often I shift positions. Cross-legged, sitting on my legs, sitting with my feet up - I can't sit still for too long without moving.

For the rest of summer, I'm predicting my essentials will be:

- my Rayban Wayfarers
- a pair of comfortable flats for walking around in
- floaty summer skirts
- seeing friends I've not seen much throughout the year.

Let's hope the weather holds up this summer :)

year two, term three essentials

This term started off with exams and then a five week project block. As a result, there weren't many physical essentials: most of them were on my computer (such as Pages, Numbers, etc).

However, revision and project time both have one thing in common: time management. It is essential to have a rough schedule to ensure that everything is done on time. Therefore, my essentials this month were a planner, a project notebook (an A5 exercise book from Artbox) and two black pens that saw a lot of use: a Kuretake Zig Cocoiro and a Uniball Signo.

No pretty colours this term but it's been a weird term! I was super organised and had all my notes written out by the end of my second term and that's why there are no Muji coloured gels or coloured post-it notes!

It's my two-week summer break now before I go back for the next academic year so I'll keep this post brief. Once term starts again, I'll most likely have more (and better) study pictures to show :)

year two, term two favourites and essentials

This term has been work-filled and with no break since Christmas, I'm definitely feeling the pinch. Good job exams will be over in just over two weeks and then I'll get a few weeks' off to recuperate! Anyway, onto this term's essentials and favourites...

Essentials

Stationery-wise, I've been using a Leuchtturm 1917 notebook for my revision notes and it is now filled to the brim; so much so I now have some overflow revision notes on loose A4 sheets of ruled paper. Alongside this notebook, I've used Post-It page markers, post-it notes and a to-do list from Katie Leamon (I couldn't find the exact same one for sale online, sorry!). In terms of pens, I used a lot of colour: Zebra Mildliners to highlight things, Pilot Juice gel pens, Muji gel pens and a Pilot Kakuno fountain pen. Poking out of the top of my Leuchtturm notebook, you can see an Avery tab - a number of these were used this term.

Favourites

At the beginning of term, I purchased this fox jumper from the January sales. I had some vouchers to use and the total cost of the jumper came to just over £5! Definitely a purchase I don't regret and I've been teaming it with a white sleeveless shirt just so I can have a collar poking out at the top.

For those of you on Instagram, you may have seen that my sister and I swapped perfumes and in return for Daisy Dream by Marc Jacobs, I gave her Gucci Guilty Black (which I had received as a gift and never used). Daisy Dream has been my go-to perfume this term and I love how light, feminine and youthful it is. The bottle looks pretty cute too.

For health reasons, my diet has changed dramatically and gluten-free was one of the things recommended by the doctor. It has done wonders for me (for example, the fatigue has disappeared and the bloating has gone - both positive things!) but it has meant seeking out gluten-free snacks has been a massive headache. I have a few Coeliac friends and they've given me recommendations but my personal favourites to snack on are: Dove's Farm Gluten Free Chocolate Stars and Lazy Day Foods' Millionaire's Shortbread. Neither are cheap so are only occasional treats. I've also started baking my own bread with the aid of a bread maker (all of my tip money from my summer job went on that machine... gulp! But I'm happy to say that it has been worth it.) and also my own cakes. A gluten free lemon drizzle now my signature bake!

Next term will be spent doing a research project so it'll be interesting to see what my favourites and essentials are in the next instalment in this series of posts :)

What were your favourites and essentials for the past four months?

term three essentials

This term, I finished another Oxford ring bound notebook and resorted to just a normal Oxford A4 refill pad. Other essentials this term were:

Some flashcards. From left to right, they are from Netter's Anatomy flashcards, Rang and Dale Pharmacology ones and my own for clinical and communication skills.

In terms of pens, it's not much different from term two or term one. Muji gels, Papermate Flair felt tips, Pilot Hi-Tec gels and a Uniball eye rollerball.

Page flags have been invaluable for highlighting things that needed more time on during revision and post-its were also important for noting down things I wanted to look up when I had the time.

Other essentials were salad lunches (hot weather makes me want to eat only salad), my friends for keeping me sane throughout the madness that was a term full of neuroanatomy and musculoskeletal stuff and the sun (which showed it's lovely face more often than not).

P.S. Do you like the new mini-redesign of the blog? I tweaked a few things and I think I like this layout better!

term two point five: university essentials

Term two was a funny one for me - we had exams in the middle of it and then term three technically started straight after that. Three weeks later, we got a ten day break before the craziness of term three restarted. Anyway, I found that I had a different set of university essentials (compared to this blog post) for this random three week period and I thought I'd share what these were. 

MT masking tape x2, Pentel Handy-line S highlighters and a Zebra Hyper Jell 0.5mm pen in blue.

First up, I love these retractable highlighters. I do believe that humans are inherently lazy (at least, that's my excuse) and pens with no caps were designed to exploit this. I'm beginning to really grow to love the Zebra Hyper Jell as the flow of ink is smooth, they make my handwriting look neat and I love how the barrel isn't too thin nor too thick.

Washi tape definitely make my revision notes (and everything else) one hundred times better. I've not used them as much this term as I did in my first term but towards the end, I started to introduce them more and more into my notes. Maybe I was just desperate to find a new way to procrastinate?

Netter's Anatomy Flashcards and my own anatomy flashcards.

Flashcards are my new favourite item to throw into my bag before heading off to uni in the mornings. The anatomy ones are so lovely that I find myself admiring the illustrations for longer than I probably should. They have proved invaluable for anatomy learning as our once-weekly sessions in the dissection room can be quite overwhelming as we cover a ridiculous amount of stuff in a ninety minutes!

This Semikolon notebook is something I carry with me everywhere. The blank pages are perfect for drawing diagrams, flow charts and mind maps; and are also great for when the lecturer shows up without copies of his slides. The navy and cream stripe print is somewhat nautical and summery and the paper is of a high quality too!

Above is an example of some lecture notes I took last term when the lecturer didn't have copies of his slides for the year. Normally, we are provided with a copy of the lecture slides but occasionally, this doesn't happen.

I wonder what term three's essentials will consist of?

term two's essentials

My second term comes to an end today and I thought it would be a good time to review my 'studying essentials'. These are the items that have been invaluable for me and I will explain why and how I used them to my advantage.

First up, the above picture shoes a to-do list pad, some sticky flags and post-it notes. I only started using the to-do list during my revision week for fine little details that needed my immediate attention before the imminent exam. The two lots of sticky flags were useful for highlighting pages of conditions in various medical textbooks and also for separating the non-science lectures from my more clinical/science ones in my folder (as the sections are assessed in different ways in the exam).

For group work, I use an A4 spiral bound notebook and the one of choice this term was this pink one from Oxford. The paper is lovely and thick and the notebook means I don't have to lug an impossibly heavy A4 folder to uni twice a week (though I ended up doing that in the run-up to exams where I stayed late at uni to revise).

Of course, I couldn't live without my diary and for most of this term, I was in a compact orange Filofax Metropol but I moved back into my Smythson binder for the remaining few weeks. 

In terms of pens, I couldn't keep my hands off the Pilot Juice ones I impulse bought in Hong Kong (definitely one of my better impulse buys) and Muji gels. The blue pens I used were a Uniball Protech, Uniball Eye Needle, Muji gel and a Zebra Hyper Jell.

As I was all about mind maps and diagrams this term, I found these Papermate Flair pens invaluable. I won these in a competition Porsche, over at Coffee and Stationery (thank you, Porsche!), held a few months' ago and although they are felt-tip pens, they are thin nibbled enough to be used as normal pens.

I bought some folders while in Hong Kong and these Kaweco ones were great. They can each hold 300 sheets and I found that this capacity was only just enough for the two modules this term.

Finally, these Martha Stewart x Avery x Staples plastic tabs were great for separating my work because each week, we do a patient case (the name being made up but the case is based on a real life scenario) and one week's case can be vastly different to another's.

This term, I tried a completely different approach to my work and study and I think it has worked better for me. Of course, it was probably helped by the cute essentials I used in this post :)

december review

Instead of talking about my essentials for December, I am going to review what I was up to. For the first half, I had uni and exams (worst time ever) and the second half was spent in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong's transport system isn't much different from London's but it is a bit better (air con on buses and trains, yes!) and more punctual. They use an 'Octopus card' as a travel card and it isn't dissimilar to the Oyster card we use in London. Hong Kong were using the Octopus long before London started using the Oyster though!

This Octopus card ended up being quite essential during my two-week stay.

During the flight there, we flew over a part of China that was really beautiful:

I promise that the above picture was taken over China and not over another part of the world!

The airport had some amazing Christmas decorations:

As did an area of Tsim Sha Tsui:

Here was the view across the harbour while I waited for a Star Ferry:

Hong Kong is quite often seen as a financial hub with many tall and shiny buildings but where my dad is from, it is really quite rural and has an authentic 'village' feel to it. On one of the days, we had a vegetarian brunch with my mum's side of the family and the next two pictures show the area that we had the brunch at. It was a really amazing and beautiful area.

I will do a post on some of the food I had whilst I was in Hong Kong but until then, here is another picture of the same area. Can you see some high rise buildings in the far distance? I loved how tranquil this place was (it's called Ping Che for anyone who is interested).

In complete contrast to the village areas of Hong Kong, Harbour City Shopping Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui had a few 'observation decks'. I took advantage of one of them to take this picture:

And so it was, two weeks passed by really quickly. I saw a lot of family and friends and apart from the ridiculously cold weather (it felt like it was colder than the UK!), I had an amazing time. With there being an uncertainty as to when I'll next be able to visit (holidays will be scarce for the next four years for me) and as I hadn't been back since the summer of 2009, it was nice to be able to see some familiar faces and places.

On the last day, we had breakfast at the airport:

And before we knew it, it was time to head to the gate where I snagged myself a window seat in order to take this picture. The shadows in the background are actually mountains and although it looks very bright and sunny, it was still quite deceivingly cold that day!

Whilst on the flight back to the UK, I opened my window to a view of the sunset:

All in all, my December was hectic and I felt exhausted after it all (but in a good way!). Not only did I see a lot of people and eat a lot, I also had the pleasure of attending a wedding of my cousin's daughter. It was truly an amazing night and I will most likely blog about the food at the very least (a Chinese wedding banquet is very different to one a Western one).

my november review

It feels like that all of these posts are about my studies, but to be fair, studying is my life at the moment. They say that the first year of this course is the worst and they really aren't lying so far.

This month's essentials:

Flashcards

I tend to use flashcards to remember things that are a bit harder to memorise. Making them can be time consuming and I usually prefer to write out my notes, rather than condense them into flashcards. So far, I have made cards for the clinical skills side of the course:

And I also cheated by buying some anatomy flashcards (best £20 spent ever):

Technology

Earlier this month, I got my hands on the new iPad Air. It has proved invaluable as iBooks holds a few of my essential textbooks and the apps you can get for medical students are just amazing. It isn't half bad as an entertainment source either...

Stationery

Finally, these two items are permanently on my desk at the moment:

MT washi tape (the thin one) and a Muji pot of (mostly) Muji gel pens. All for prettying up my revision notes of course...

Now that December is here, I anticipate a month full of Christmas-related cheer (hello Christmas songs, mince pies and thick-knit jumpers and scarves!).

october review

This month, I went through an extraordinary amount of paper and ink. Here are my essentials to explain why:

Avery tabs, Muji gel pens, Staedtler Lumocolor permanent pen, Zebra Bepens and washi tape.

The Avery tabs were useful for dividing each week into separate sections and they have also come in useful for bookmarking pages in various textbooks. The pens and washi tape are super useful for when I write out my notes that will be used for revision. One of the pens shown is the Zebra Bepen 05 and it isn't a pen you can get here in the UK (as far as I know). My mum bought a few when she was last in Hong Kong and I really like how it writes.

The next picture shows my written out notes and you can see how I've used the pens and washi tape shown in the previous picture.

Another thing that I found useful for studying was the Medscape application on my phone. It has been invaluable for looking up various conditions and just generally browsing when bored on public transport.

Finally, I made flashcards for each clinical examination as we went along and due to their portability, I look at them when I can and then run through them in my head. They also come in handy for when I actually practice them on a friend as I can look at them after doing the exam and then see what I missed out/didn't do as well, etc.

My life has become all about studying and due to the amount of pens I end up going through each month, you might well be seeing all kinds of pens and stationery in the next few months!