A New Year

A New Year

Happy new academic year and welcome to all first-year students (and anyone who has newly found our blog). If you’re new here, we are a group of UCL medical students providing a guide for making the most out of medical school through this blog: A Realistic Guide to Medical School, based on our own experiences.

As always, feel free to ask any questions or provide suggestions for future blog posts in the comments section. We are also starting up an emailing system. Sign-up here to receive email alerts from our blog, where we will email you with blog articles as they are released and also as relevant to your year and time of studies. Link: https://forms.gle/JkTzgnrZ29mKgCTF9 

As we enter the second year since the startup of our blog, we have sadly had to say goodbye to Anush, Jessica and Maddie, as they start a new exciting journey as FY1 doctors. At the same time, we are excited to introduce ourselves as the new team who’ll be maintaining and running the blog this year.

Meet the Team


Hi, I’m Anika and I’m a fourth-year medical student. I enjoy writing helpful tips about how to make the most of your time at medical school. Being from Liverpool, London seemed intimidating and intense at first, but I’ve grown to love it and the people I’ve met here. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music (no, not just the Beatles) and I am an avid badminton player.

I hope to dispel any common myths or worries about the course that you guys might have. Feel free to message me if you have any specific questions or concerns 🙂


My name is Em and I’m in my fourth year. I’m really excited to be part of the team and look forward to sharing my insights from my time at UCL so far! 

I hope that our blog will help to open up some of the ‘hidden curriculum’ of medical school. You may be wondering what the ‘hidden curriculum’ is; it’s the unwritten lessons that we learn, often unintended, alongside our official studies. Some of these are really helpful and potentially important for our future careers, like learning about what matters for specialty applications, or how to get the most out of your practical teaching. Unfortunately, others can be more insidious, such as seeing and eventually copying clinicians who follow poor infection-control practice. 

It’s really important to speak about our experiences and share them with one another so that we are all able to benefit. By sharing our ‘realistic’ advice, I hope that our blog will help you to get the most out of medical school, and prepare you for lectures, labs, clinical placements, and beyond.

I’m always happy to chat – drop me an email.


Hi! I’m Sujikka and I’m a Final year medical student. I can’t quite believe I’m reaching the end of medical school, but I’m excited to share the experiences I’ve had along the way and tips I wish I knew to make the most of your time here. Despite being a Londoner for most of my life (I was born in Norway), I enjoy trying out new food places and playing badminton in my spare time.

I hope you find our guide helpful and if you ever want to have a chat (medicine or non-medicine related) feel free to message me.


Hi! I’m Vikram, a Final year medical student. Despite having lived in five different parts of the world already, the last five years have still been a fresh and exciting mixture of ups and downs as I tried adapting (still am adapting in all honesty) to the university lifestyle. I’m excited to share some of my experiences with you in this guide and hopefully give you a few tips along the way. Outside of medicine I enjoy travelling, films, and most things coastal-side. Feel free to email any questions, concerns, or if you just want to have a chat.

Please sign in first
You are on your way to create a site.