Quote Originally Posted by Sapphira View Post
Hiya!

I've just started in my first year at Sheffield medical school, so thought I'd start up a weblog to record what it's like here! I'm straight out of school and applied to Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester and Hull York. I got interviews from all except Notts, and offers from Sheffield and Leicester - I was really pleased as Sheffield was always my first choice!!

Anyway, I arrived in Sheffield on 18th September. After collecting my registration pack, I went to my hall of residence - Tapton Hall. After unpacking/saying goodbye to parents, I set about meeting the other people on my corridor. A lot of people say that at uni you make friends amazingly quickly and this was true for me! I went to dinner with 3 people who live near me and we all got on really well! Not everyone moved in on the first day though.

Freshers week at Sheffield was great, we went out every night seeing what the city had to offer. The union had club events every night, and we went to the first one on saturday. It was pretty good, but had a slightly odd feel as everyone there was new! We decided not to go to the union club every night and went into town to explore on the others. There are loads of good bars in Sheffield, and in a lot of them you can sign up for a membership card and get great discounts off drinks. The clubs we've been to (Kingdom and Leadmill) also seem pretty good, personally I preferred kingdom cos leadmill was sooo packed and hot, you couldnt move! Also kingdom is closer to my accommodation so the cab fare back is less!

When you hear people talking about hills in Sheffield, they are not exaggerating. Trust me. My hall is on the top of a hill and after a few days my legs were aching so much from walking up and down it! Im sure you get used to it, but its still quite hard work at the mo....

Spent a lot of money in freshers week - club entry, cab fares, drinks, food, gym membership, it all adds up! Going to have to save a bit now I think.

We didnt have any 'academic' medicine lectures in the first week, they were all introductory. We were introduced to the school of medicine (tues), the dissection room (wed), physiology (wed), had another medicine at sheffield talk (thu), mentors (thur). This seemed a lot more lectures than my friends from other departments had, and some of them were in the middle of the sports/activities fairs etc.

'Real' lectures started this week. The timetable is quite good, you can have lecutres/practicals any time during the day between 9 and 5, but there are loads of gaps. You can do whatever you want in these, obviously you're advised to study but as of yet there isnt a great deal for us to do! Some of them were pretty good, like the heart/circulation. The lecturer was really good and the material wasnt much advanced from A level biology (im sure this will change soon though!!). Some of the others were quite boring, like 'the library'. This week I have 18 hours of scheduled teaching -average of about 3 or4 a day.

We've been given our first assignment, an essay on the history of medicine. There are loads of titles to choose from, think I'm going to do 'Magic myth and mummification -the medicine of ancient egypt' as thats always interested me! This is going to sound pretty stupid i should think, but the deadline is not until 19th November and i wish it was closer!! It means everytime i think about looking stuff up for it, i think 'err...you've got like 7 weeks, its only a 1500 word essay, what are you doing?!' but it's still always there in the back of your mind.

Teaching takes place everywhere - the medschool (nice new lecture theatre!!), the union, chemistry lecture theatre, even in a converted church (we were worried we would be sitting on pews, but there were seats there!). So there is quite a lot of walking between them.

I now know why catered hall students are likely to put on a stone weight. Its because the hall food is so bad that they leave most of it, go for a few drinks, find themselves absolutley starving and head to the local pizza/kebab/chips/burger/balti outlet. I try and stick to the 'boring' food like jacket potatoes/pasta/soup etc cos from experience if the other food looks dodgy (and it normally does) it tastes it too! The meal allowance is pretty good, so you can buy a roll/butter/fruit/yoghurt for next days lunch! Would seriously reccomend a mini fridge as drunk people on your corridor pay no regard to whos milk is whos when deciding to drink it out of the bottle...actually when it comes to the drunk fridge raids, pretty much everything suffers, be it milk, squirty cream...even pizza remains that had been there for a few days were eaten by some of the boys on my floor!

Right, I'm going off now to fill in some of my anatomy booklet, I'll keep you updated on life in Sheffield -which seems pretty good so far!

S xxx
The study conducted at Sheffield University in the United Kingdom found that a group of patients who received treatment significantly reduced pain after one year compared to the group that received usual care after. Sheffield University is worked in medicine field from many years.