Anatomy Intercalation

I intercalated in Anatomy and the reaction when I tell people that is ‘What, a whole year in the DR?’ But no I didn’t enter the DR once!

Anatomy as a BSc is all about studying very specific subjects into a great depth e.g. hormones or the musculoskeletal system. It is in direct contrast to Medicine where you need to know a bit about many things, the BSc course in Bristol allows you to choose 4 modules, out of a possible 12-15. Your final exams are then based upon those modules so you need to know a lot about only 4 subjects!

The research project allows you to develop analytical skills, be a part of a lab group and see how cutting edge research is conducted. Bristol is a centre of excellence for many research subjects and as such you really feel part of a team. Once you’ve completed your dissertation future SSC’s are an absolute doddle in comparison!

The course teaches you many skills that are transferable to medicine e.g. paper reviews, referencing, perseverance when your project isn’t going the way you planned and better studying techniques!
I’m really really glad I did it, it made me realise how sure I was that medicine was the right career for me, but that in the future I would be happy to do a further period of research, where as before I thought this would be the worst aspect of the BSc, in reality it was actually one of the best. The staff who run each module are enthusiastic and helpful, the tutorial groups were on average 10 students, so in contrast to Medicine the dynamic meant you could get some really good discussions going and ask as many questions as you wanted to!

Finally doing a BSc and graduating halfway though Medicine gives you a little more inspiration to carry on, Clinical years are tough and so by having an extra year as a ‘proper’ student, whilst many of your friends form halls are also in their final years is fun. 5 years studying without any qualification is hard and by elongating the course to 6 years you actually get some recognition that all is going well halfway through. When you then enter the third year, not being with the people you spent two years with isn’t that strange as everyone is split up into different firms and different Academies and it provides the opportunity to make even more friends!