Have you seen anything like this??

Click Image to Enlarge

The internet in IMU is amazingly fast! I downloaded the whole 700MB movie in like 20-25 minutes!

The RM30,000 I am paying per semester is worth it! Haha

Alright, I decided to update a little bit on my life as a medical student in IMU.



I think life in IMU is very relaxed compared to other medical schools based on what I have read from Yiyun's blog about first year RCSI and also what I hear from a lot of other friends overseas.

I've got two hours of lectures a day. And coincidentally, for Semester 1 students, our lecture is at 8-10am. So we have the whole day for ourselves to study/revise/do assignments/play.
For Sem 2 students, their lectures are 1.30-3.30pm,
Sem 3 - 10.30-12.30pm,
Sem 4 - 4-6pm, and
for Sem 5 it varies throughout the day.


My Auditorium

Other that the two hours of lecture, once a week we have one and a half hours of PBL, and one hour of medical museum session.

PBL stands for Problem-Based Learning where we are given a case and based on the case create learning issues and go back and research on it. PBL is quite tiresome because have to do research, and sometimes we don't know how deep we ought to know. At the moment, one week we have PBL 1 and then the following week we have PBL 2. Starting next semester, I will have PBL 1 and PBL 2 on the same week. Means I will then have to do research every week.

PBL 1 is when they give out the case and we come up with the learning issues. Then we go home and do our research for one week; but we usually do it in one day because we chill all the way until last minute. Haha. And then PBL 2, we discuss what we've research. Each PBL group has 10 people. So it isn't really an intimidating presentation session.

However, this time I've got a pretty intimidating facilitator. (No, he is not pretty. He is pretty intimidating. Haha) He makes us feel like we are saying the wrong thing, and sometimes makes me feel stupid. During lectures, he is fun though. He is a very good anatomist, he can articulate his lectures well. He is Sri Lankan.

(Btw, before I came into IMU, I heard rumours that A LOT, if not most of the lecturers in IMU are from Sri Lanka and you can barely understand anything they're saying because of their thick accent. I have come into IMU to debunk the myth. And my conclusion is: IT IS A MYTH!! In the whole of IMU, there is only one lecturer who speaks with a heavy Indian accent. His name is Dr P Kumar. A lot of people don't like him as a lecturer because they can't understand what he is saying and each of his one-hour lecture has 100 over powerpoint slides. He is from India. There are many other Sri Lankan and Indian lecturers but their accents are perfectly fine, and I can understand everything they say; perhaps better than Irish lecturers who (my mom claims) speak through their nose.

Anyway, Dr P Kumar apparently is IMU's biggest asset. He is extremely smart and he contributes a lot to the research in IMU. Rumours are that he is the highest paid lecturer in IMU! He is also a very approachable lecturer and he can explain to you one-on-one very well. And he is one of the few lecturers who replies to questions via email. However, he is moving on to greener pastures in NUS because the IMU students don't appreciate him because of his accent.

Well, on the brighter side, that leaves us with no lecturers with heavy accent)

Medical Museum session is a time when we go into the medical museum and look at the models. IMU has no cadavers / corpse / dead body for us to dissect. The reason they give us is because we are not dealing with dead people. Besides, looking at a real person's body won't tell you which is the artery and vein and nerve. So IMU think investing in models is more worth it than investing in cadavers.
Other than that, we occasionally have labs.


This is the medical museum




Sadly, IMU does not like the idea of having dissections. I wanna play with dead bodies!!

Throughout the semester, we've only got two assignments which is called AIR, short for Assigned Independent Reading. AIR is a 300 word essay that we've to write without plagiarising. We're given a question and some journals and websites or textbooks to refer to and summarise everything to 300 words. It's quite easy also lah. Can finish in half a day but they give us 2 months to do.

IMU has a whole world of short forms and abbreviations. MMS for Medical Museum Session, PBL, AIR, IMU itself is an abbreviation, SILOS, OLIS, OSCE, OSPE, SAQ, OBA, MEQ. On the first day / week of university, we were bombarded with so many abbreviations we barely understood what was going on when the lecturers refer to them.

I don't know if I'm playing down and making IMU sound like an easy place to study. Haha. But trust me, it isn't.

Assignments and all may not be much of a problem. But the studying is crazy. We have to study hard so that we can do well. And having geniuses as classmates don't help.

Actually, I don't know if I will excel doing medicine. I don't do exceptionally well in Biology or Chemistry. I do do well, good enough to scrape good grades but these subjects definitely aren't my forte. Most of my friends would know that my strength academically is mathematics; more on things which are application, not so much of memorising. I am attempting to apply that in Medicine; not just memorising but understanding and connecting my knowledge.

I know I'll do well in medicine, with the assurance from God. His strength is perfect in my weakness. I somewhat know that I would not achieve my fullest potential if I did anything else. It is what Pastor Kenneth said as "unfulfilled desires" and "unbirthed dreams".

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I somewhat feel like I am studying so hard. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my time studying because I don't understand what I am reading even after spending one whole day studying a particular lecture.



I used to study last minute, and understand everything and do well in exam. I am so tempted to do it again. But no! Short term memory cannot help me save my patients next time!

I wanna do so much more than studying lah. I think I just need to manage my time better.
I want to travel around the world.
While I am still in Malaysia / Asia, I want to go to Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam, Indonesia, Brunei, Thailand, India. I have never even been to Sabah and Sarawak also.
I want to go climb every peak in Malaysia and brave through every river and jungle.
I want to go on humanitarian relief missions! MERCY Malaysia still haven't replied to my volunteer application.

I am somewhat very inspired, especially since my holidays after A Levels to go out on some adventure, to go do something crazy. My cycling trip to Subang failed, because I couldn't find the right time, and the weather wasn't helping.

I want to spend more time inspiring myself with fictional and non-fictional books, with movies, biographies, and autobiographies.

I want to experience all that God and life has to offer!



Pictures taken by Ngun Mei Yan and posted on http://www.2007pm3.blogspot.com
For more info and pictures of IMU, and also my friends from other countries, visit the blog

I will try to bring my camera and take pictures of my house, room and university okay! =)