Intercalated degrees Is studying for an intercalated degree a wise career move?
Editor - In response to the article about studying for an intercalated degree perhaps we should be asking whether obtaining a BSc changes us for the better? 1 Does it affect what we put back into the system?
I intercalated a degree between the second and third year. Not only did I gain three letters to my name, it was without doubt the most character building, mind numbing, and delightful year that I had experienced. Having spent two years struggling to remember facts and not knowing how to separate the must know from the rest, I was finally putting my brain to work.
Working with my supervisor and starting with a hypothesis, I was searching for arguments, counter arguments, extensions, extrapolations, and implications. I was challenged practically, academically, and mentally. For those of you who appreciated the logic and sequence of events in maths, physics, and chemistry at school, you will be glad that you took a year out to see how that could be applied to your life in medicine.
You will also realise that the journal section of the library is there for your use.
But as the article pointed out, those who have done a BSc did not do significantly bet.
ter in the clinical years.
Also, with the introduction of special study modules throughout the five years of training, students are now given the opportunity to do research and present work in an area of interest. The skills gap is now narrower. FIhile an extra loan is a prob.
lem easily solved by another month as a preregistration house officer, some other things are not so easily replaced. The clinical years are most productive when part of a group of people is bucking each other up, a necessity where you are taught to be superficially friendly. If by staying behind a year you lose the friends that you started with as a wide eyed sweet 18 year old, your clinical years may never be as fun, or as easy as they could have been. But your decisions are not based on what those around you do, are they?
Shankari Thiagamoorthy, final year medical student, guy's, king's and St Thomas's School of Medicine, London
Email: shankari-t@hotmail.com
studentBMJ 2001;09:443-486 December ISSN 0966-6494
- Leung FI.C. Is studying for an intercalated degree a wise career move? studentBMj 2001;9:418.9. (November.)
