The O Word.

Overworked, overstressed, underpaid.

Well, most of that is my own fault... Currently I'm still working three jobs, totalling around 45 hours per week. Obviously, the tax is a bitch. And to be honest, nothing can be as stressful as January/February - realising I'd failed to get in to Uni and that my A Levels were sapping all the motivation and spirit I'd started with. If anything, I'm in a fantastically rare stress-free situation right now. 

As well as Homebase and working for the council (Sessional worker, swimming with special needs children/teenagers) I work at a secondary school as a 'Learning Support Assistant' (read: Teacher's Lapdog).

But I dress FAR better.

I also hold an additional role as 'ASD Coordinator', this means looking out for the autistic students within school and keeping in contact with home (we have an unusually high ASD cohort).

So far, I've really enjoyed my work within school: it's rewarding, interesting, stimulating and the Learning Support department have been really great at helping us 'newbies' settle in. But that doesn't mean I'm not pleased to see half term...

It's so funny to be back in a school, back watching lessons - an hour for a lesson goes so fast! I love watching the children giving it large, being rude to the teacher, giggling about some joke - I remember doing it myself - and it's only now I'm older that I see how cringy they are. Honestly, rolling your eyes at a teacher and whooping when someone is told off is not cool.

I've also realised how much I definately do not want to be a teacher now, regardless of how hard they work and how many hours they put in (judging by my own career choice, noone can call me work shy!) it's just how disheartening it must be to stand in front of a group of people who really do not care what you have to say. I want to share my passion for science with people who are keen to hear, whether as a higher education professor or to patients' who require the information: I don't want to train and then spend my working hours controlling crowds of uncaring, unruly children. Of course, not all children are like this; I work with lower ability students and so tend to see more of the classes full of 'difficult' children who either can't, or won't, behave because they fail to see the point in school. Interestingly, many of these 'naughty' children who are quickly written off by teachers are actually very keen to learn - once you've given them the attention and time that they need, their behaviour improves. One little madam asked me this week if she could sit with me in Maths - she's gone from being a nightmare, to the most attentive, hard-working student in the room. Just because she gets it. It's not fair for me to criticise, but one does wonder if smaller classes would allow teachers' to give children the attention they need to work hard and achieve... perhaps this is how private schools, with notoriously tiny classes, churn out such impressive results (and students)?

And the other thing that breaks my heart: how these kids sit there and say 'schools crap anyway, what's the point?' The point is that those grades say something about you for a long time, they'll dictate the types of jobs you can start off with and whether you can pursue a career in something you're passionate about, rather than a job just to feed your family. Isn't hindsight a fabulous thing? If there's one thing that is certain about humans, it's our ability to look back and realise that others' generally do want the best for us.

I think I've picked the perfect gap year job - the hours are generous enough that I can enjoy my friends and wages, whilst the work is interesting enough to be worthwhile. I've also realised how quickly working in a professional environment forces you to grow up; this is the first time where I've been given a position of responsibility and treated as an equal by adults, rather than a child. There are things that need to be worked on; I still find it difficult to talk to teachers as colleagues, rather than 'Miss' or 'Sir' and I'm very aware of how much reassurance I need, by asking questions and checking that I'm doing okay. However, I really hope that by the end of the year I can feel confident in the roles that I hold, I can reflect back on all the positive and character-building experiences I've had and I should have a respectable amount of money saved up for Freshers' Week. Roll on Xmas break...

Trimming.

Today is the day Jordan can finally rejoice; my UCAS has been sent off, so I'll be de-stressed for at least a week.

I am aware that 11th October is exceptionally late (deadline is 15th and I'm sure I wrote earlier of sending it in early) but the summer went rather quickly and I was extra-pinickety with what I wrote.

If you haven't yet read the final version of my statement you can do so here.

So, I guess/hope I'm not the only one that finds writing these things incredibly difficult - where do you even begin?! Hopefully, my breakdown should shed some light on the writing process... and also make non-Uni applicants realise just how much is expected of the statement!

The Middle

It may seem counter-intuitive, but for a PS the middle is the best place to start. This provides the filling for your statement and the really interesting parts.

The first step (for a medic) is to brainstorm around three key points:

Why Medicine?

What are your motivations? Specific interests in the field? This section will probably be the shortest and will end up being adapted into your opening

Experiences

How do you know medicine is for you? What voluntary work/employment/work experience have you had? What did you learn from this? (Most of my interviews were based around 'what I've learnt on reflection - they absolutely love it)

Personal Achievements/Extra Curricular

What makes you stand out? This is where your Grade 8 violin/Royal Ballet School/Olympic swimmer/President of the Student Union fit in.

To be awkward, I also added

Gap Year Plans

Debatable whether required - but it makes sense to say what you're planning to do after receiving your A Levels, incase they think you're a bum.

Referee Statement

All the bits that won't fit in your actual statement or are a bit too simple e.g. Maths Awards/helping out with an open evening

The headings help to provide structure to your statement, and you'll probably be able to pick them out in mine, despite not being as perfectly ordered as they are here.

Under each heading I started bullet point-ing my interests.. and another key point: apparently admissions tutors want evidence for everything you say. So, I made notes as to which resources/experiences I could link into each statement. For example, I'm really interested in the role of the brain and nervous system after reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat.

For the experience section it can be difficult to remember back to all of the experiences you've ever had - personally, I'd done over 200 hours voluntary work when I wrote mine, in 5 or 6 places. Luckily, I kept a reflection diary which I could read back through, highlighting key examples that demonstrate this or that skill. Even better, if you can write your reflection diary in the format 'Today we did XXX and I felt/thought XXX and this made me realise/taught me XXX' you'll save so much time later on and be bang on for a medic place.

Achievements can be the difficult bit - particularly if they don't seem a big deal to you, but it's important to remember what skills they demonstrate. To help me with this, I looked up the admissions criteria (each PS is 'marked' for a number of categories such as 'demonstrates responsibility' or 'caring experience') and wrote a list of qualities Medical Schools look for - then all I needed to do was find an example for each. If you're interested, my checklist looked like this:

• Understanding of medicine
• Motivation/Commitment
• Caring attitude
• Social awareness
• Effective communication
• Teamwork and leadership
• Appreciate others' views/empathy
• Responsibility
• Non academic interests and linking these to stress
• Study skills
• Self motivation
• Reflection
• Perseverance
• Over-coming setbacks

Hopefully once you've gone through this process you'll be left with a bullet-pointed list of skills, qualities and experiences you'd like to include in your statement. Grouping these together into topics, linking to related subjects and expanding these topics into full sentences should form a very nice base for your final statement.

Introduction

The most important thing. Since KS3 English you're taught the importance of a powerful opening and it's no different here. I found this bit extremely challenging; it needs to capture why you want to study medicine in a very clear, honest way. There are plenty of examples on the internet that use quotes to open - personally I think this sounds cheesy and lazy, but your choice! (NB However, I do think that quoting a book as inspiration/interesting in your statement is a very valid point).

For my opening I used the 'voice record' app on my phone to record a five minute informal explanation of why I wanted to study Medicine in the format of an answer to 'So why do you want to study Medicine?'. It sounds tacky, but expressing this aloud really focused what I wanted to say and what was most important for me. I listened to it back, copied it exactly and edited the colloqualisms. My final opening was an amalgamation of this opening and my original opening from last year (because let's be honest, in one year my motivations and enthusiasms haven't changed).

Conclusion

I'm very partial to a decent conclusion. Something sharp, summative and powerful always sounds good. I used this section for the standard 'I really want to go to Uni/be a doctor' but it can be good for squeezing in key words that you may not have been able to elsewhere (I'm thinking of my admissions tutor list here). Anything that suggests you want to develop/use specific skills, looking for a challenge etc sounds pretty good to me.

Trimming

Unfortunately, any good medic should find at this point that their statement is double (if not triple) the allowed amount of 4000 characters (about one side of A4 in size 11 font, if you're interested). The really hard part is trimming it down, without losing too much of the meaning. A good start is looking for any repeats, such as any experiences that demonstrate the same quality. After all, the tutor isn't hugely interested in which grade you have in piano - it's the skills that it demonstrates (perseverace, commitment, manual dexterity) that is important. And after that, it's up to you to decide which is most important to keep. However, you will feel a sense of pride in how many positive things you have to say about yourself! There is something satisfying about writing out a list of how fantastic you are...

Whilst medics should be nodding in agreement, I imagine other disciplines recommend slightly different approaches (although saying why you want to study a subject is always a good idea!) but a lot of this can be adapted to individual circumstances. Hopefully this gives a little insight into how such an important piece of writing is built up and why us medics stress about it so much! After all, it is one of the most important parts of any medical application.