By Tolu Atilola
COVID-19 has revolutionised life for virtually every university student. As a second year medic, I was looking forward to lots of lectures, labs and seminars this term - but it didn’t exactly work out that way! Instead of our 150-person strong lectures at the Medical Sciences building, we had pre-recorded (and a few live!) lectures online. Instead of anatomy demonstrations with real cadavers, we had online pictures and videos. All in all, it definitely took some getting used to….
While I did miss the experience of chatting to friends before lectures, I can’t say that I miss having to get up at 8am every day. As someone with ADHD, being able to pause/rewind/speed-up online lectures has been a godsend, and I do feel like I’ve been able to learn a lot this year despite the circumstances. I was disappointed to miss the rest of our anatomy practicals this year - but I have ended up finding a lot of good online resources in the meantime, and I still have 4 more years of anatomy practice to go!
I think the main benefit of an online term has been the extra free time that I now have. In a normal year, Medicine is a very time-consuming subject - you’re constantly in the lecture theatre, in a tutorial or in the library. Having all my practicals/lectures/tutorials online this year has meant that I’ve had a lot more time to explore my other passions - I was an editor at The Oxford Student newspaper, I’ve gotten involved in startups, and since we’ve returned in Trinity, I’ve been playing a lot of sport. Going forward into third year, I’m looking forward to the return of in-person teaching - but I’ll also appreciate the elements of Covid-era teaching that will be carried forward (recorded lectures especially!).
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