This poem depicts life as a first-year medical student during the first year. I wanted to capture the sense of starting to feel despair in learning within the same structured online content – day in and day out. It was also important to mention that although it has been a life-line personally to keep busy with my studies, the work-play life balance has been so compromised that all the hard working feels like it’s not paying off – showing me the importance of having occasional rewards in life to maintain motivation.

I think it is also overlooked that retaining information in this same way with no in-person interaction to keep engagement is extremely challenging, and I’ve personally found it hard to learn and remember things without any useful context – be it clinical or just discussing with peers and tutors. As much as the patient encounters we do get are undoubtedly the highlight of the fortnight, these opportunities are scarce, and early patient contact was such a driver for me to want to study at Bristol.

Admittedly the workload gives a good structure to the day in these chaotic times, but it’s hard to get excited when I’m not sharing this learning experience and seeing cadavers and real-life examples in the flesh. This way of living has made studying rather all-encompassing with no real opportunity to blow off some steam through social interaction and doing what students should be doing!

The ending captures feeling desperate for a ‘normal’ medical-student experience as despite implementing self-help mechanisms for managing the feelings of loneliness and maintaining healthy habits, these only suffice to an extent…. to a point where now it is clear to me that being social and enjoying time with friends whilst not being trapped inside… is essential. Despite these feelings I know medicine is an incredible experience and full of exciting opportunities, but personally, this first year has certainly been an anti-climax.

I think feelings of depression and low motivation resonates with a lot of students, but in particular medical students as I know many of us have found the huge scientific content overwhelming at times, and time-management often trickier to maintain, especially when the lectures are online and so have less of a drive to get up and start the day by travelling to a live lecture which is inevitably much more engaging. Of course, arguably a lot of this comes down to the individual’s work-ethic and ability to manage in this way. Nevertheless, some slack needs to be cut, bearing in mind the impact this pandemic has had on well-being and mental health – be it enhanced fear, anxiety, depression or simply struggling to cope amidst the high-pressure medical students face, as well as that which we put on ourselves.