Intro

Medical School can feel like climbing a mountain that springs landslides below you every couple hundred metres.

To cope with the growing pile of assignments, you choose to dedicate all of your time to revision. Late nights become early mornings and you question why you got involved in the first place.

For such a taxing course, having people to speak to is useful. In this small guide, I’m going to talk about how to recognise the Golden Moments of starting a conversation and top tips to start socialising.

Problems faced by Medical Students

As a medical student, you have to dedicate many hours of your spare time to the course—more than other subjects. There is always this ethos of working hard to achieve. When I started medical school, I was pressured into not having a social life — I spent all my time doing flashcards, notes or anatomy.

Fast-forward ten years, and you’re not going to remember the lectures you attended or the flashcards you sped through — it’s everything else.

As medical students, we need to embrace not knowing it all and should spend more time with others.

It’s not too hard to speak to others, you just need to know how to find those golden moments

The Golden Moments

Trying to connect with someone when they’re rushing to get to a lecture is no use. You need to be an expert at finding the Golden Moments to start a conversation.

Golden Moments are when you find yourself standing and avoiding making eye contact with someone. This could be at the bus stop, filling up your water bottle, heating your food in the microwave, making a coffee and so much more.

Exercise yourself to not pick up your phone — look around and you may just catch someone’s eye and start a conversation. There are plenty of Golden Moments in a day, you just need to look out for them.

3 Tips to socialise for students

You don’t need to drink alcohol or splurge all your money to speak to people. All it needs is you willing to get out there and make new connections. Here are 3 top tips to help you on your journey:

Tip #1

• Making new friends can be hard. Join new clubs and talk to different people in your course. Medicine is a great subject to meet new people in the same boat as you.
• If you are not into certain activities such as drinking, partying, eating out etc, then let your group know beforehand. This is so much easier than telling them once you’ve been invited to an event
• Likewise, if you love an activity, shout it out and announce it. There’s nothing better than ideas being thrown into a friend group

Tip #2

• Food is a perfect transition into a conversation. Sit with someone different during lunch and notice how starting a conversation becomes so much easier.

Tip #3

• Walk around with a smile. Sounds too overused? That’s because it works, smiling makes you look more productive, approachable and comfortable. It makes you feel happier as well!

Take Home Message

Medicine is a tough subject but it doesn’t require sacrificing your social life. A great way to escape the stress is to connect with others and forget the academics for a while.

If you need to find ways to talk to others, look for the Golden Moments. Clubs are a great way to meet people outside medicine with similar interests.

And finally, always smile — it makes talking to someone so much easier.