Student blogs

You’ve just been accepted to the Bachelor’s Programme in Biomedicine, but there’s something on your mind – what will you be getting yourself into if you accept? What will the next three years look like?

I can’t answer all these questions, but I can help give you a picture of what my days often look like. On that note, welcome to a day in my life!

Important note: the schedule can vary quite dramatically from course to course, and even from day to day! So to be specific, this is a day in my life now – April 2021, during the Pharmacology and Toxicology course whilst we’re a year into distance learning.

The mornings

I am generally not a morning person, so I tend to wake up right before class and roll out of bed to attend my Zoom lecture. We start at 9:00 on most days, except for the sweet exceptions during lab days where my lab group has the later slot.

If I – heaven forbid – actually need to go to campus like in the good old days, I set 7 alarms to help me micromanage my morning, and bike to the Solna campus. This takes me a grand 15 minutes, which is very compatible with my night-owl sleep schedule.

Lectures & lunch

The lectures are spaced out with a break every 45 min or 1 hour, which is pretty nice. The breaks are more rejuvenating when you can use them to talk to someone – I tend to take a moment to bother my flatmate or my cats. Honestly? It’s great. The first break is also when I tend to make myself some breakfast: the nicer lecturers give 15 min breaks, which is the perfect amount of time to make tea and eat some eggs.

This followed by lecture, break, lecture, rinse and repeat until lunch! Which is usually around noon and lasts for an hour or so. Followed by… you guessed it – MORE lectures!

Nowadays, classes tend to end around 3 or 4 pm. This is basically as intense as it gets – many courses have a more lenient schedule. The physiology course, for example, wrapped up around 13.00 on most days.

Of course, we don’t have lectures on all days; we also have labs, seminars, and individual study days before the exam.

After class

You’re done with class, so the rest of the day is yours to use as you wish! You can work part-time, do extracurriculars, hang out with your friends/family, spend time on your hobbies, etc. If you have a project or presentation due, you’ll be responsible for finding time to work on it with your group mates.

I tend to work on my extracurriculars (you can read my blog Extracurriculars in pandemic times), chat with a friend or my family, and have a nice evening cooking or baking something nice! Of course, doing some studying and working out are thrown into this mix too.

If we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic, dinner plans and exploring the city would be fun ways to hang out with friends 🙂

Bed and beyond

I tend to stay up pretty late, and my productivity is often boosted after 9 pm – this blog, for example, is being written at almost midnight. Great for me, but terrible for interacting with people within office hours. The schedule-send function on email is a glorious asset that makes my life much easier.

Sleep is very important, especially if you’re trying to focus on morning lectures. Try to get your 8 hours (no matter how tempting the next episode looks), and try to keep a steady sleep schedule. It will help, I promise. I’m not great at it either, but I’m doing my best here.

Finally

Remember that your days at university are often malleable! Some important details:

• You are free to modulate your extracurriculars as you like, and sometimes that means cutting things out of your schedule to make time to breathe
• Although it’s highly recommended that you attend, most classes aren’t mandatory. Check the schedule to see what is!

• We only study one course at a time, so you won’t be juggling clashing tests and deadlines!
• If you’re a student trying to balance familial commitments, learning disabilities, your health, etc. with your studies, you should definitely turn to the study counselors to see what support and accommodation KI can offer you.

I hope this blog helps you get a better picture of what the life of a biomedicine student can look like! Of course, this is only one perspective, so maybe you’ll go forth and create a different experience for yourself.

🖤Inika