A day in the life of a medicine student

Hey, I'm Esraa, a fourth year medical student. There is a version of medical school that lives in the imagination: white coats, urgent corridors, a lifetime’s worth of knowledge acquired by osmosis. The real version begins at 6:15am with a bowl of breakfast and the quiet arithmetic of a bus timetable. 

The Long Way In 

My day is built around the 7:17am bus. College is an hour away, and I have made peace with that, mostly. The bus is a strange, suspended pocket of time: too early for anyone to expect anything of me, too long to ignore. I put on music and wage a slow battle against sleep, which I lose more often than I’d like to admit. 

By 8:10am, I’m in town, with just enough room to stop at Pret A Manger for a chai latte. It’s a small thing, but small things carry a lot of weight at that hour. By the time I reach campus on York St, I feel like a person again. 

Starting the day hands-on 

My subgroup is beginning the year with teaching, so the pace is gentler than it will be later on. Mornings are given over to tutorials and procedural skills, and this is where the textbook starts to become a practice. We learn to take ABGs, to fit a cervical collar, to work through scenarios in the RCSI Sim Lab and more. In these practical tutorials, we’re given the opportunity to learn from demonstrators before being allowed to practice these OSCE skills over and over again. There is something humbling about performing a skill for the first time on a mannequin, knowing that soon it will matter on a person. It’s the part of the course that makes the long hours feel like they’re building toward something. 

Midday 

At 12:00pm we break for lunch, and I head to the Humanarium cafe at 118 Stephens Green with no fixed plan, ordering whatever catches my eye. For now the pastrami sandwich is winning, though I reserve the right to be swayed. It’s a good midday pause before the afternoon’s tutorials, which usually wrap up around 4:00pm. 

Getting back home 

Then it’s back on the bus, back to music, and back to the question of the evening. The plan is nearly always the same: study, but also leave room for family. I’ve learned that the second half matters as much as the first. By 5:30pm, I’m home, and I indulge in the homecooked dinner waiting for me. After that comes a cup of coffee and the work itself: flashcards, lecture notes, whatever needs reading. 

By 9:30pm, it’s lights out, or at least an attempt at it. In an ideal world I wind down with a book. In reality, I’ll admit, it is sometimes a little doomscrolling before sleep takes over. Then the alarm goes off, and it begins again. 

No Two Weeks the Same 

If there’s one honest thing to say about this course, it’s that the routine refuses to stay still. One week I’m on the York Street campus; the next, I’m in Beaumont for teaching, or in another hospital altogether on a clinical attachment. The long commute and the early alarm are constants, but everything else keeps shifting. 

If you’re thinking about medicine, that may be the most useful thing I can tell you. It’s demanding, and it is rarely predictable, but between the chai lattes, the sim lab, and a good dinner at the end of it, it is also unexpectedly full of small pleasures.