Dear Rachel – What I Will Miss From Medical School

iebpharma108

Bells and Rachel have been through two degrees together and as they stand on the precipice of graduation, Bells reflects on what makes medical school bearable and lovable.  

Dear Rachel,

We did it! I can’t believe it. Where did the time fly? I remember the IEB Pharma day we moved to Churchill at the start of our first pre-clinical year. I felt a mix of exhilaration, nervousness, incredulity, sheer panic, imposter syndrome, and dead-set steel. Four years was going to last a long time I thought, but you have to take things one step at a time. But those four years have passed by in a whirlwind.

Over the last few weeks I’ve sat with friends in the common room at the hospital, reflecting back on the past seven years of uni. People we met way back in Biomed. It feels so odd, almost unbelievable in fact, that when we first met in O-week 2015, we would all somehow stay together.



I know we’re far off from our twilight years, it’s only the appetisers that have been served, and the feast of the journey has yet to arrive, but I will hold dear our memories.

I will miss studying with you late into the night as we crammed for our first exams. Do you remember driving to the local pizza place before we gorged ourselves trying to memorise the brachial plexus? Do you remember when we started fencing with the arms of model skeletons as the hours drew further into the morning? Laughing in hysterics whilst dreading the oncoming exams?

I’ll remember coming back from placement or 10 hours of classes or whatever it was, utterly exhausted, and you cracking out a tub of Magnum ice-cream. We’d get our teaspoons and crack the chocolate on top before almost devouring the entire thing in one sitting. I felt so sick after those nights but the memory has sat with me all these years with warmth.