Medicine is a difficult degree to pursue. It is difficult to earn a place to study the degree, it is difficult to study the degree, and it is a difficult career. That is the reality that must be understood about the degree prior to choosing to study medicine. This is not written to deter you from studying the degree, but to illustrate an important point: resilience is the most important trait to have going into this degree.   It is important to reflect upon why you want to pursue medicine, and if you would be able to work through the difficulties of such a degree. Medicine can be such a fulfilling degree, but if you walk into it blind, stress and burnout will very quickly deplete your passion and ambition. First, any applicant must appreciate the very real difficulties that come along with studying a degree like medicine. All medical students are held to much higher standards than any other university students, whether that be with attendance or even social media presence. Med...

2600. Band 3. Not quite the end of the world, still enough to apply to some Russell group universities, albeit not the best ones. That was my thought process until 3 of my 4 Medicine options, including Birmingham, rejected me outright before the interview stage. And the interview from the remaining option? Its rejection felt like the final nail in the coffin. At this point, if anyone had asked me, I would’ve said that I was a failure. Except what I didn’t know was that The Best of Planners had laid out a path that was better than getting accepted after that interview. Had that happened, I wouldn’t be studying Medicine at UoB right now.  I fell ill towards the end of Year 13. I couldn’t sit the exams that year. I instead sat them a year later. With that came a new round of applications and a 2nd chance at the UCAT. Remember how Birmingham had rejected me before the interview stage? This meant I could apply to them again, since most Med schools have a policy of denying students a 2nd...

  Time and time management are the most important aspects of your daily life. Time imposes a hard limit on what you can achieve and are able to do, and Allah swears by the passage of time in the Qur’an - (وَٱلْعَصْرِ’ (103:1 Every part of one’s conditions, growth, development, movements, actions, and morality take place within time, and time is limited. Applying this to the example of us as Muslim students, we need to use the finite resource of time to study, progress in our degrees, and to pray and engage in worship. Hence, with more time, we can excel in these domains further. So how do you get more time? You take a look at what you already have. The phrase ‘I don’t have enough time’ is something you hear and probably say to yourself all too often, whether it be in response to a piece of advice or as a general venting complaint. The phrase is slightly misleading, however. It implies that we are already operating at maximum efficiency, in fully optimised schedules without white sp...

  Asalamu alaikum wa rahmatu lahi wa barakatuh. In this article, we will briefly explore the concept of lifelong learning and consider what it means to us as Muslims.  Any student in healthcare will have heard the phrase “lifelong learning” before. You may have even referenced it in a personal statement or interview, but have you ever truly reflected on its implications? In healthcare, lifelong learning is treated as a given, largely due to there still being so much to discover about the human body, and the likelihood that many questions will remain unanswered within our lifetimes. But what exactly is lifelong learning? The General Medical Council (GMC) describes it as continuous professional development (CPD). CPD can be defined as the ongoing process of striving to improve one’s skills, keeping up-to-date with relevant literature and discoveries, and ensuring competence in clinical practice. A concept that highlights the necessity of lifelong learning in medicine is the term...

The iPhone is widely renowned as a hallmark of man’s ascent to technological greatness. He has, in it, the ability to find the answer to any question, to calculate any equation, to capture any moment. He has made it impossibly slim, refined it from every angle, fashioned it, and from his perspective, perfected it. Yet with every advancement he has made, he has made it less easy to repair; with every complexity, an added hurdle to its servicing. Built-in lithium batteries have now replaced the removable batteries of the past. Preceding the battery, with cuts in size, even the back panel has become a challenge to remove. However, Allah SWT creates with the most perfect design. No matter how complex we make the iPhone, we know that the complexity of a fly, or merely the eye of a fly, or even a wing, still holds the capability to amaze us… to bewilder us. Then what can be said for man, the most excellent creation of the Most Excellent Creator? The Most Merciful has embedded within us the a...