So an experience journal, how will that help? I would recommend buying a small notebook that you’ll keep from Year 12 all the way to the end of Year 13. All you got to do is plan something you’ll do, like work experience or an extra-curricular activity and then write a short description about it.
For every experience or work you do, answer the following questions:
- What is the date/time I did it?
- What exactly did I do?
- Where was it?
- What did I learn?
- How did this fuel my passion for Medicine?
- How has it changed me/led me to do?
You wouldn’t believe it, but universities only really care about the final three bullet points of that template. You could go complete work experience in India and observe a baby being delivered. But what did you actually benefit from that? If you can’t explain, you clearly didn’t develop yourself. This is to deal with opportunity that is separate from all medical candidates. Some candidates have family working at the NHS so can get readily available work experience. Some candidates can fundraise the money to go to India to undergo medical shadowing and support. Some candidates live in rural areas where there are no surrounding hospitals or surgeries in reach to volunteer or work at. So they’re primarily interested on what you have learnt, how this has fuelled your passion for studying medicine and how it has changed you (whether you did something else after that experience or learnt something).
Make sure you fill this out closer to when you have completed or doing the experience. The purpose of this is to make sure every detail is retained for later recall in your personal statement building or interview practice.
If you write this, you’ve basically got the skeleton to your personal statement and the answers to those questions in your interviews.
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