Student blogs

First off: congrats to everyone who received their admission results this week!

Now that things are getting real, you might wonder what studying at KI looks like really – on a day-to-day basis. The first thing I want to tell you is that the schedule is very different depending on what course, week, day it is. But even though there is no recurring structure in the weeks, the puzzle pieces that the schedule consists of are all more or less from the same box.

Today, I’ll introduce you to the most common components of a KI student’s schedule. While I will try to keep it as general as I can, there will also be toxicology-specific details for those of you who are interested!

Lectures

You probably all know what lectures are, but they might be different at KI than you expect. Our classes are quite small (in toxicology we’re around 30 students per year), and the threshold to ask a question during a lecture is quite low. Usually, we also get good amounts of breaks, so a long lecture is rarely held in one go.

Seminars

Seminars are like lectures but with a focus on interaction. They often contain some lecture-like parts but then drift off into discussions with either the whole class or in smaller groups. Sometimes, seminars also come with specific material that we students are expected to read beforehand, so that discussions can run smoother.

Journal clubs

Journal clubs can differ a bit, but the core is always the same. We get a scientific paper to read and first meet up in a group to discuss it. This session is sometimes guided by a tutor or by a list of questions. A few days later, we get remixed with the other groups and present our respective papers to each other. Journal clubs are a good opportunity to think and talk about the research in your field.

PBLs

This one is quite toxicology-specific, as far as I know. PBL stands for problem-based learning and is a type of group work about a “case” where we receive information about a person’s symptoms and habits. Our task then is to figure out what happened to the person and why. In practice, this means: discussing different theories, reading scientific articles to back up these theories, and ranking and presenting them.

Labs

I’m in my second semester of the toxicology master’s, where we are currently taking the “lab course” (not the official name but the one everyone uses). We started with computer labs and then moved over to the wet lab, where we got to choose and run different assays for toxicity assessment. Labs are usually rounded up with a lab report where you explain what you did, why, and what the results mean.

Self-studies

Some days look intimidatingly long when you see them in the schedule, but a closer look shows: self-studies! This means that it’s up to you where to be and what to do, although there usually is an exam or seminar (or something else that requires preparation) a day or a few later, so you will probably know what to do. I personally love that self-studies are a part of the schedule and not just expected from us to happen on weekends or evenings (although that can still happen, of course. But it’s not as common as I had feared).

To sum up

You can expect to come across lectures, seminars, journal clubs, labs and self-studies during your studies at KI. Specifically in toxicology, you will also be doing PBLs, while the amount of lab work is lower in toxicology than in some other programmes. And probably there are a lot of other programme-specific differences that I’m just not aware of.

The schedule looks different every week. Within my programme, we currently have a lot of lab work – but had I written this blog post two months ago, I probably wouldn’t even have mentioned labs. At the same time, we had many PBLs in the first semester, while our group projects these days are more “traditional” group assignments and don’t evolve around patient cases anymore. What I mean by this: today’s blog was just a snippet of my schedule, and I hope you’re excited to find out more when you start in autumn!