Hi, I’m Aqeel Zaman. I am currently a 3rd year medic at the University of Birmingham. Along the journey i’ve documented some of the experiences that have led me to this point. But if you haven’t seen that then here is where you can see my full journey (more or less) 🙂.
(Btw I do apologise if this is a bit wordy, feel free to skip to wherever).
My Journey
Secondary School
Some of the best times of my life were had at secondary, I came out of my shell a lot more and made some friends that are still like brothers to me today.
Despite having such a fun time back then, it also had led me to start prioritising things such as going out and impressing people over the more important things like taking care of myself and trying hard in school. But don’t get me wrong I didn’t go completely off the rails or anything, but definitely more distracted than I should have been.
The reason I had gotten like this is because I had always done good enough to get by. I never really cared about being the best or smartest in the class so for the most part I was happy with doing well enough by my standards.
The first time that I ever really felt the need to study (from what I can remember), is in my year 11 mocks where I had gotten a 4 in physics. I hated physics, but the fact that It was much lower than my other grades in this set of mocks bugged me. So I just decided to actually read some textbooks and try to get some work done for my next mocks. My result in physics in that mock was a 6 (strong B). By no means was this a crazy result, but it did make me appreciate that I can do better when I put the work in.
Covid then decided to come around and cut my year 11 short, this meant the school would be using our mock exam results to base their final grades for us. So it’s a good thing that I put in some effort for them mocks because on results day I achieved 4 A*s, 4 As & 3 Bs. This was more than what I could’ve asked for haha, so yeah results day was a success.
College
In the UK we usually decide if we want to go to a sixth form or a college after secondary school. The main difference between the two is that sixth form usually feels more similar to school as you wear a uniform and have to basically stay there for a full school day each day. College on the other hand has way more freedom. You can turn up in your own clothes, you only come in for your lessons and the teachers aren’t on your case as much as sixth form in my experience.
This was a no brainer to my 15/16 year old self, of course I was going to choose more freedom! And tbh now looking back it was probably one of the best decisions I could have made. The reason I think that is because college really let me become much more independent than I would have if I had chose the other option. This is because I really had to chase up opportunities by myself and just be way more proactive if I wanted things to get done.
Just that experience of being proactive has definitely made me into a better person today as I don’t just let opportunities pass me by. An example of an opportunity that I sought out was the A2B scheme. This is available for students to apply if they meet certain contextual criteria – I met this criteria and so I was accepted onto the scheme. This allowed me to get a guaranteed interview from UoB and made my grade requirements to get in go from A*AA down to ABB.
As much as college made me a better individual, I really did not enjoy my time there. This is not due to the teachers or anything like that. It was because covid just made it so antisocial. We used to get kicked off campus if we weren’t in a lesson and in lessons we had to sit on a 2 person desk by ourselves. Then all my lessons went online in the second lockdown while I was in year 12. All of this really made college quite boring. This also is kind of the reason why I just basically put my head down and started doing more work.
A Big Change
In my summer going into year 13, I was about to experience something that would change my life. I won’t go into the details of it, but on the 27th of August 2021 I had lost my mother. This was not an expected loss or anything like that, so it just came at me out of no where.
I really did feel the pressure then due to the fact in the next few weeks I had my UCAT, my driving exam, my mocks, my personal statement and UCAS application to do.
I ended up getting through all this and passing or doing well enough on everything for me to get into med school. But this was one of the toughest periods of my life, but it did teach me that I am resilient and taught me a valuable lesson. If I am still here today after the worst thing I ever imagined actually happened to me, then I can get through anything else going forward.
I won’t go into too much more depth about that, but yes by the end of year 13 I had gotten 2500 Band 2 on the UCAT, passed my driving test, gotten 4/4 interviews for medicine – 2 of those then went on to become offers. And in the summer of 2022 I was awarded ABB in my a levels. This made me a UoB medical student
Medical School
Uni was very tough to acclimate to at the beginning, in my freshers week I had to give a presentation in a group to a bunch of people I had just met. This scared me so much that i could barely eat, drink or sleep the day before. If you’re applying or are even about to start medical school this might sound quite daunting. I could just say it does get better, but I can do you one better and show you it does through a story.
In my second year I got notified that the next day my GP placement had been cancelled and I had the day off. Until 10pm that day I thought that was the case, that was until I got an email notifying me that they had allocated me to another placement so I wouldn’t miss any teaching. The annoying part was that I also had to give a presentation as well. But I did go and gave my presentation with a new doctor and group watching me and it went so smoothly that even I was shocked.
The point I was trying to make there is that if you told me on day 1 that I would have been able to do that, he wouldn’t have believed you. So if I can do it then you can too.
Currently
Right now I am in 3rd year. This is the first year where I will primarily be on the wards learning there. I hope to do a much better job documenting from this point to show you how you how it is and show you anything I learn along the way.
So yeah, that’s pretty much the gist of it. Hope that gives you a nice not so little insight into my life, I hope it helps give a bit more context to what I post. Thank you for being a part of my journey, wherever it takes me 🙂