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Oh, this year and uh I'm at down in college. So, yeah, today I'm talking to you guys about essay writing, you know, is quite, um, something that I think has a lot of stigma around it because, you know, the chances are that for most of you, if not all of you, you won't have taken an essay writing subject or your A levels. And so I think it can be quite daunting, you know, it was quite daunting for me learning that you have to start writing potentially multiple essays a week as part of your degree now. But I just wanna say, you know, straight from the start essay writing isn't something to be feared. I think it is very much a skill and just like any other skill, it's something that with enough time, uh with enough practice and you'll get a lot of practice. It's something that you will improve at and you will get better at over time. So I just wanna start by making sure we're all on the same page, uh about what an essay actually is. And I know that it seems like a bit of an obvious question but you know, for me personally, when I came into this degree, my kind of perspective and essay writing was very much shaped by my G CSE S, you know, because I hadn't sat an essay writing a level. My perspective on essay writing was very much shaped about around, you know, kind of G CSE English lit things like writing about an inspector calls writing about Macbeth. That was my experience of essay writing. And I think it's not the most relevant for the kinds of essays that you'll be writing as part of this degree. So I've just got a few definitions here for, you know, what an essay is. So, first of all, yeah, an essay is an attempt, an endeavor. I think it's a pretty good definition. Uh, essay writing can be a real slog. Sometimes there'll be times where, you know, it's really hard to finish an essay to put words down on the page. But, you know, as I've said, as with any other skill, it's something that with enough time and with enough practice you will get better at. So we've got another definition here. A first tentative effort in learning or practice. So, you know, as I've said, this kind of essay, writing is probably something that's gonna be quite, er, novel and unique to you guys. And I'm gonna show some elements of the first ever essay I wrote today. But, you know, your first ever essay is gonna be something that you're gonna look back on quite fondly. I think, you know, the chances are you will spend a long time doing it a lot longer than you probably should spend. But I think it's only really by putting in the time putting in the effort that you will improve. Uh So we have another bit of a woly definition here but, you know, just focus on the end here, an ir irregular undigested piece, you know, some of your essays won't be the best. I think that's something that you have to accept straight from the start. You know, you need to accept that you probably will get a 22, you might get something lower. Um But that's fine because at the end of the day, you are practicing the skill of essay writing. It's not something that you're gonna get straight from the start. It's something that over a few years you'll get better at. I Yeah, this is just a, a bit of a, a waffle definition to be honest, but I found it and I thought it's kind of funny. So this is uh a bit more of a relevant definition for you guys. So a written answer that includes information and discussion, usually to test how well the student understands the subject. So I'm just gonna highlight a few key words here. So written is obviously a piece of writing. You know, I'll go into the practicalities of how we write the essays later. Um What else about how I like it. I've highlighted information and discussion. So ultimately, an essay is conveying information to the examiner and it's trying to answer the question and it is a discussion, you know, uh the key features of the discussion are that it has um it assesses kind of both sides of the argument and it comes to some kind of a consensus. But the key thing here really is this last bit usually to test how well the student understands the subject. So if there's one thing you should take away from this is that essays are a test of your understanding and that's why we're writing them, the medicine. So this is just a, a summary of that last definition, you know, really an essay is assessing your understanding. So I promise I will get into tips for essay writing. But I think it's important to, first of all, take a look at why we write essays in the first place because you might think that a subject like medicine, you know, something that's quite scientific doesn't really lend itself to essay writing. Um But I've got three kind of made reasons here for why we write essays. So the first reason is a bit of a cop out. Um we write essays because it's one of the ways in which we're examined. So I'm not sure if you guys have had a talk about how the exams work, but if not, or just as a reminder, there are uh, you set one main set of exams at the end of each academic year and there are two main components to these. So you have first of all, the second MB component and then you have the tripos component. And don't worry if you don't get this straight away, I think it, it takes everyone at least until the January of first year to actually understand the difference. But essentially second and B is what you need to pass in order to pass the year and to progress on to the next year. And second MB consists of MC Qs multiple choice questions and practical papers. Tripos. On the other hand, is what determines your rank within the year and your degree classification. So you know whether you get a first for that year, whether you get a 21 or 22, that is all tripos. So tripos consists all of Mc Qs and Practicals. But the key differentiating feature of tripos is that essays also contribute. So that's the key takeaway message here. Essays contribute to your tripos, they don't contribute to your second MB. And so therefore, you could theoretically fail your essay and still pass the year and still be able to move on to the next year. Although that being said, I wanna reassure you that failing an essay is almost impossible. You know, the only way you can fail an essay is if you don't write anything at all. So failing an essay is something that you definitely don't need to worry about. So, I, I've established that we have to write essays as part of our exams, but it doesn't really answer the question, uh, of, you know, what's the point? So the point really is, um, it goes back to our definition of an essay, an essay is under, is testing your understanding of the subject. So, when it comes to testing knowledge, I think knowledge is quite, it's a bit of a wishy washy term, but I like to think of it in kind of two main components. So you have uh the memorization aspect and you have the understanding aspect. So these are the two components that really make up learning as a concept. I apologize if I'm being a bit waff here, but it all makes sense. Trust me. So a subject like medicine, there's unfortunately gonna be a lot of stuff that you just have to memorize and you know, it makes sense. There's a lot of stuff that goes on inside the body and it makes sense that you have to memorize it in order to be a proficient safe doctor. So that's kind of where the second MB comes in. The second MB is testing this kind of breadth of knowledge, you know, do you have the memory? Are you able to memorize this content? But this kind of, you know, M CQ practical testing isn't the greatest for testing your understanding and that's what Cambridge are really eager about. They wanna make sure that you as a doctor, you as a student are really understanding why things happen the way they do. They wanna make sure that you're not just memorizing things at a surface level, they wanna make sure that you really, really understand what you're learning. And that's where essays come in. Essays allow the examiner to test this and to make sure that you're able to apply it into new situations as you might do when you're a doctor in the wards. So something else that um you know, another purpose for writing essays is to encourage extra reading. So um the chances are that you will be genuinely interested in what you're learning in your lectures and you'll naturally want to do some more extra reading of your own. And essays are a really great opportunity to include this extra reading in and I'll go into more detail later in particular about extra reading. So now that we've covered, why are you writing essays? Let's get to the practical, you know, how do you write an essay? So the first step is planning and um I can't understate how important it is to plan. You know, I'm definitely someone who can be a bit impatient sometimes and likes to jump straight into just writing an essay. But I really do think you need to be disciplined enough to, you know, slow down, take not even five minutes just take a few minutes to really have a nice cohesive plan before you start writing your essay. So an essay plan essentially should be a mini essay. So, within it, you wanna have an idea of what you're going to be writing in your intro, what you're going to be writing in your main body and what you're going to be writing in your conclusion. And essay planning itself, in my opinion, is a very good revision strategy because you know, it's very active, it's forcing you to dig inside your brain to make the connections and to make that essay plan. So there are two main components to writing your essay. So you have the kind of answer component if you like the kind of the content of your essay, but then you also have the structure and you need to really take into account both of these things when it comes to writing your essay and making sure that you do as best as possible. So let's start off by taking a look at your introduction and how to plan your introduction. So I would argue that, sorry, I would argue that the introduction is potentially the most important part of your essay. And that's because, you know, the examiners at the end of the day, they don't really spend that long at marking your essay. So I'll open up a question to everyone. How long do you reckon examiners spend marking your essays? Any guesses? 10 minutes, two minutes, a few minutes, five minutes. Yeah. So the kind of message, you know, the message is that I don't really spend that long. So, in, er, this year, um, we studied pharmacology and one of the lecturers is kind of the head of exams for that module. And he said to us that he sometimes spends as little as 45 seconds marking an essay in the exams. He said for the most part, he spends 2 to 3 minutes, but it's not out of the ordinary for him to spend as little as, you know, just under a minute marking an essay. And, you know, I think it can be a bit disheartening to learn that when you, you think about how much time and effort goes into writing an essay. But then I would also argue that you don't really need to spend that long reading an essay to, to mark because I'll go into more detail later. But, you know, a good essay, it clearly stands itself apart. So the, the key message here is that you need a really strong introduction because the examiners don't spend that long marking your essay. So you need to make sure that you leave the best impression possible. So how should you plan your introduction? Well, first of all, you need to make sure that you read and understand the key word in the question. So each question will have its own keyword and these can be quite variable. So for example, we might have discuss, you might have comp compare and contrast. Uh and all of these are gonna have their own particular ways in which you need to answer them. And it's very important that you get this right. And just on a, a broader scale, it's very important that you answer the question that is in the title and that you don't just brain dump all the information, you know, because that's showing no structure is a very messy way of answering the question. Uh because you're, you're ultimately not answering the question to make sure that you really read and understand the keyword. So let's say, for example, you get a, a question that is asking you to discuss. So if you get a discussed question, you need to make sure that you present multiple sides of an argument and that you ultimately come to some kind of a conclusion. You can't sit on the fence and present the evidence. You need to make sure that you come up with some kind of a an answer at the end. You could also be given a compare contrast, that's a fairly common key word. And this is very particular because you need to make sure that you don't just list everything you know about the the topics you've been asked to compare and contrast. You need to make sure that you are making direct comparisons, but you're looking at similarities, but you're looking at differences because ultimately, that's what the question is looking for. So, something else that you can include in your intro is to essentially reword paraphrase the, the question because that's showing that you understand what's being asked of you and it's gonna make the examiners happy. So, something else that's very important in um your intro is to define any key words that are in the, the title and doing this again, it shows the examiners that, you know what you're talking about. It's gonna put them at ease and it's gonna make your essay uh a lot more robust and it's gonna make it seem like a much more professional piece of writing. Uh So the, these two points here, the next two points are, in my opinion, what really sets apart a kind of bog standard intro from a really good intro. And that is in your introduction itself, you want to set out the main points you're gonna be making. And I like to use uh what I call an upfront conclusion. So that is you essentially answer the question straight away in the introduction. And again, you are just making the examiner's job a lot easier. You are, you know, showing them. I know what I'm talking about. Here you go. And it makes them a lot more likely to give you a better grade. So that's the introduction and a bit of the planning stage out of the way. Um Let's take a look at the kinds of things that you can use in your essay. Main body and the structure of this main body to really uh you know, make sure you have a nice strong essay. So I'm gonna focus here on subheadings and in particular active subheadings. So if there's one thing you take away from this talk, make sure it's this. So when it comes to your main body, um using some paintings, I think can be, it can come with a fair learning curve because, you know, personally start paintings, want something that I used in say a G CSE essay. And so it comes with its own learning curve. But I think using active sub headings is an incredibly valuable skill. So what is an active subheading in the first place? But essentially an active subheading is making a point itself and it's conveying information and it mediates the flow and progression of your essay. Ultimately, it gives the examiner an easier time marking your essay. So um I've just got here an example of a uh the kind of question you might be asked. So this is um a question that I wrote an essay about this year. So in second year, you will cover N HB neurobiology and human behavior um which is quite a er I quite enjoyed it. You know, you look at sensory systems, you look at a bit of psychology, you look at the brain really, that's the main focus and this is an example of a question that is asking us to compare and contrast transduction processing and coding in the visual and auditory systems. So this might not mean much to you, but um I'll hopefully break it down and show how it um how active subheadings really help to make sure that you have a nice strong coherent essay. So first of all, pay attention to the command word here, compare a contrast. You have a very specific key word here. The examiners want you to make direct comparisons between these two systems, between the visual and the auditory system. So this is an example of an active subheading. You could use the visual system involves indirect transduction, whereas the auditory system involves direct transduction. So what's great about this is that I'm making a point straight away. I I'm simplifying the examiners lives. They don't have to go digging in my paragraph to find this point. I've set it out straight from the get go and I'm making this direct comparison. You know, I'm saying one system uses indirect transduction. The other system uses direct transduction. So compare this to simply writing the word transduction as my subtitle, that will be a lot more passive and you know, it wouldn't be enjoyable to read, it would make the examiner work to find out the points that I'm making. And um I'll talk a bit more about kind of the practicalities of essay writing later in terms of, you know, how you physically write the essays. But um just as a brief summary, you do type up your essays both in the exams and your supervisions. And so make sure to make your sub heading bold and underlined, you know, that that's one way to draw attention to them. So make sure that, you know, you think a bit about the formatting, but that's sort of the main point here. The main point here is to use the active sub headings. Another way in which you can really impress the examiners in your main body is to be as information dense as possible. So this is a very dense slide here. But essentially what it is is it's a list of points that could potentially show up in uh you know, there are lots of different topics covered here. Um So what you see is black can stand alone is at its own point and the red is essentially uh additional information that really lifts up the point you're making. So let's just take a look at this first point here. Frusemide, an inhibitor of the N KCC two on the apical membrane of epithelial cells in the thick ascending limb of the loop of Henle is a powerful loop diuretic. So if I were to remove everything in the red, that sentence would still stand alone as its own point. You know, I could very easily say beside is a powerful loop diuretic. But by adding in this extra information adding in the extra molecular information for how this particular drug works. You know I'm saying, I'm saying it's an inhibitor of this particular channel. I'm saying where it's located. I'm really elevating the content of my essay and there are different examples here. But hopefully what it illustrates is that, you know, in your lectures, you will learn the real nitty gritty about how things work and you know, if you learn it, make use of it in your essays. Yeah. Yeah. But that being said, you need to use it in quite a um you need to judge using this extra information. Well, because as you can see if you were to read this, it's very dense and it's not that nice to read. So you need to make sure that you er you avoid verbal diarrhea, right? So now diagrams. So our diagrams again is something that, you know, if you come into essay writing with the kind of G CSE English lit perspective, it's something that's gonna be completely foreign. You know, you wouldn't include the diagram in an essay about Macbeth. But diagrams are definitely something that you can use in the essays that you'll be writing here. So, ultimately, diagrams are really, really useful because they allow you to get across a lot of information in a very concise, precise manner. And ultimately, it allows you to save time. And uh another aside here, examiners love them, you know. So of course, it's another way to impress them. So I've just got a few examples now to show you of um what kind of diagrams you can include. And I'll show you with my own examples of essays that I've written, uh what not to do with your diagrams and what to include in your diagrams. So this is the first ever essay I wrote. So this is, you know, a few weeks into first term in fab anatomy, you will be studying the upper limb and probably the first clinical scenario you'll look at is af injury or a fall onto an outstretched hand. And the essay I had to write is shown here. A patient falls onto an outstretched hand. What injuries are likely to be sustained, discuss the relevant anatomy, potential complications and treatment options. So this is the diagram that I ended up including in that essay. Yes, it's not the best is it um it's supposed to be, you know, someone's and their radius being fractured in what's known as a Collie's fracture, but it's obviously not the best. But what I want to emphasize is that the accuracy and kind of the, you know, the artistic nature of this diagram isn't what's wrong with this. You know, you don't have to be an artist to draw diagrams. But instead, uh these are the real main reasons why this diagram is bad. So first of all diagrams need proper labeling and a proper legend. So for example, if you read a scientific paper. If you read a journal, if they ever reference a diagram, they will say in the text, for example, you know, as shown in figure one and then beneath that, you will have figure one and the title. So for example, uh here, I could have said figure one. a diagram illustrating a collie fraction that would immediately elevate this diagram straight away. You need to ensure that your diagrams aren't haphazardly placed as well. So um this is less of an issue in my opinion now because I'll, I'll go into more detail later about how we type up our essays. But essentially any diagrams you do are gonna be scanned in. So it's not that much of a a problem, but I will say is you need to make sure that ultimately, you're not just including a diagram for the sake of including a diagram. You know, you don't want to include a diagram because your supervisor said you need to, you need to make sure that the diagram is actually adding value to the text that it's, you know, conveying to the point that would otherwise take way too long to write down. That is when you should use a diagram. And ultimately, again, using diagrams is something that you gain with experience. So this is an example of a diagram I wrote for an essay this year. So this came from one of my bodle er essays board is Biology of disease. It's essentially pathology. It's thing that you take in second year. And um one of the main areas, one of the main topics you cover in BD is the immune system. And this essay was about how essentially you prevent your body's immune system from attacking itself. How do you prevent autoimmunity? So, let's just go back to the point that we discussed a few minutes ago about how to elevate a diagram. So proper labeling, proper labeling and legend, as you can see here, I've labeled my diagram figure one, a representation of central selection in the thymus. And I've also referenced this diagram here in the text. So this is just uh a section of my essay and you see here how I reference the diagram in the text. You need to ensure that your um as we just said, you know, you need to make sure that your diagram is placed nicely in the text. And as you can see this follows on from the text in the essay. And as you can see, you know, your diagrams don't have to be that pretty, you know, this is a pretty terrible diagram. To be honest, it's my handwriting isn't the best I know, but it's simple. It shows the graph of T cell selection. And again, you know, it might not mean much to you now, but hopefully, it's showing the principles of how you should incorporate diagrams into your essays. So I think um as you can see here, this is a graph. The first diagram I showed you was a um it was a diagram of someone's hand, right. Uh So there are different kinds of diagrams that you will potentially be using and it will very much depend on the subject. So for example, for fad for anatomy, um in general, if you're drawing a diagram, yes, it probably will be of some piece of anatomy. But I think, you know, however daunting that may be, you know, it can be quite scary thinking that you need to be able to accurately reproduce the human body. That's not the case. Um The fab handbook, which is essentially your, you know, this is your Bible almost for learning anatomy. It's got everything in there that you need. That handbook has several hand drawn diagrams within it that you can essentially just copy. And you know, you don't have to think on the spot of what you wanna draw. You can essentially just copy these, learn these and they're made to be reproducible in an exam. Other subjects will lend themselves more to having uh you know, this kind of graph based diagram. It will really just depend on the the subject. You also have flow charts. You know, that's another example of a diagram that you can include. And again, flow charts are a really good way to be able to summarize a lot of information, especially long wordy processes like biochemical reactions So this here, this isn't my own diagram, but this is a diagram that essentially summarizes the molecular signaling pathways that eventually results in the contraction of vascular smooth muscle. And although it doesn't have, you know, it doesn't have a label, it doesn't have a legend. But you can see how effective this is at summarizing so much information. Yeah, you can imagine if you were to try and write this in words, it would take up a paragraph or two and that's not time you have an in an essay and it's also a lot more stylish really to have a diagram like this instead of just a lot of words. So diagrams, what should your take home point be? Diagrams are good to use. You need to make sure that you use them appropriately and if you do use them, make sure that you label them properly, you reference them in the text and ultimately diagrams are there to help you. You know, they shouldn't be a hindrance. They shouldn't be something that you kind of dread using. They should be something that you're using because you're trying to save yourself time and you're trying to make your essay nice and compact, right? So now the practicalities of essay writing. So, um again, I'm not sure if you've had this talk already, but the exams that you sit at the end of the year are all going to be taken on a computer program called Inspire. So this is something that you download onto your laptops. And what it does is it essentially locks you into the program and the exam. So you can't navigate out of it. You can't open up a word document or you can't open up Google, for example, but you're still taking these exams under exam conditions. You know, you're taking them in university buildings with invigilators. So it is very much still a closed book exam and sorry, I should have emphasized this more. You will also be writing essays for your supervisions again, you know, for the same reasons to make sure that you really understand the content and the chances are I'm 95% sure that all of the essays you write for your supervisions will also be typed. The reason I'm not saying 100% is because I have heard stories of, you know, a few years ago, but I have heard stories of people having to write maybe their first few essays by hand. So I don't wanna say for certain that you need to, that you will only be typing up your essays. So how much should you write? So I would very much say that you should write time as opposed to writing to some kind of arbitrary word limit. And when it comes to the final exams, uh you'll have between 40 minutes to an hour to write each essay. So on the one extreme, you have, um you know, for several of your subjects, you'll have to write three essays in two hours and so 40 minutes per essay. On the other hand, on the other hand, you'll be writing two essays in two hours or three essays in three hours. And so, yeah, that's the range of time limits you have for your essays. And I know I am kind of contradicting myself here by giving you uh an estimate of how much you can write. But please only see this as an indication of how much you can write, not how much you should write. So in 40 minutes, you can type around 800 words or so with an hour, you can potentially get it to around 1200 maybe even 1500. But again, you know, please don't use this as a a word limit very much right to the time. So because these essays are going to be typed, practicing typing is in my opinion, quite, quite valuable. You know, it is a bit sad, but I kind of practice typing in my spare time. Sometimes I picked it up during COVID. And I think touch typing is a very valuable skill because, you know, even beyond writing essays, you know, in life in general, you're gonna be writing a lot. So if you're able to write quickly, that's one less limiting factor for you uh to write a good essay. So how many essays can you expect to write on, let's say a weekly basis? So, as I've said, you have your end of year exams where you have to write essays, but you also have your supervisions each week. And, um, again, I'm not sure if you've had a talk about supervisions, but if not, or just in case, you know, supervisions are the small group teaching session sessions you'll have where each week in your college. So that's an important distinction as well. These supervisions are organized by your college. You will have the opportunity to discuss what you learnt in your lectures with your supervisor. So your supervisor is someone who's gonna be very well versed in that subject. And it's an opportunity for you to be able to really, um you know, test your understanding. And as part of this, your supervisors will set you essays and it really is quite variable when it comes to how many essays they set. You know, it will depend on the supervisor. Some of them are a bit more relaxed. So, for example, some supervisors might only set an essay, let's say every two weeks or so, others might be a lot more strict and they'll expect an essay every week. And whilst it, you know, it's nice to have less of a workload during term time. I think any practice is good practice. And if you do end up with a supervisor who's a bit more strict, look at it, you know, from the positive side, you're gonna be getting some really good practice at essay writing. So um I've already given you a few examples of essay titles, but I've just got a few more here to kind of illustrate the the range of questions you might be at. So, first of all, this um first essay title, why do we have Form? So this is from Home Homeostasis, which is essentially the physiology module you take in first year. And as you can see, it's a very broad question. So this is good in one way because it means that you can be a bit more creative with why you answer it. You know, you're not just regurgitating lecture content, it's actually forcing you to think. But then on the other hand, that's what also makes it a hard essay to answer because you can't just, you know, regurgitate lecture content. It is something that you have to think a bit more about. So that's kind of a one end of the extreme in my opinion. Uh On the other end, you can also have very specific questions like discuss the metabolic consequences of over nutrition. That's for men's your bio chemistry module or how the muscles act on joints and affect movement. And the cons discuss the concept of synergism using new laboard from the lemon crunk. That, that is a very loaded question. It's got lots of uh particular points that they want a dressing. And so that might be a question that you like because it means that you can be really specific in your answer, but it can also be something that, you know, you might choose to shy away, to shy away from because it's very specific at all. You know, you can, um, if you haven't prepared beforehand, all these particular points you might get caught out. And that's the, that's what's nice about, um, the exams. So, I sort of said this earlier when it comes to, um, writing essays in your exams, you'll always have a choice of essays to write. You know, you might have to choose three out of seven, maybe one out of three. But you'll always have a choice. And I'm about 90% certain of that, that you will have some element of choice when it comes to writing your essays and your exams. When it comes to your supervisions, your supervisors might not give you that choice. They'll probably just say answer this question sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. But hopefully this has just shown you kind of the range of questions you can expect to answer. So this is um a mo scheme here. It's a simplified version of the mock scheme. But um it can be quite alien hearing terms like 1st and 21, but essentially uh a first is the top, around 20% of answers, 20 to 25% of answers will be given a first and a first corresponds with a score of above 70%. A 21 corresponds with a score of above 60 a 22 with a score of above 50. And it just works like that all the way down. So, as I've said, there are multiple components to your essay. You have the content and then you have the structure and you really need to excel in both of these in order to push beyond at one and get into a first. So if you've taken into account all the things that I've said before, uh you know, using the planning, having a really strong introduction, using active subheadings, having diagrams that should get you at least a good 21. And that is, you know, that's a very respectable grade. It's a very good grade. And if you want to, you know, push yourself into a first, however, there are some tips and tricks for you to be able to push your grade up slightly. So there are two main methods really that I would um consider. So, first of all, you have what I call kind of a brute force information dump. So essentially this is where you just memorize loads of extra information and you include it in your essays. So, um it's good on the one hand because, you know, as I said, right at the start, one of the, the points of essay writing is to encourage you to read beyond your subject and to, you know, do your own reading. And so therefore, if you include it in your essays, you're gonna be rewarded for that. That being said, you know, there's already so much to memorize and memorizing more content is quite painful. You know, I don't think it's necessarily something that you're gonna wanna be doing for every single one of your essays, but I think you can be quite targeted with this approach. So, um let's say a few days before your end or your final exams, it is a good idea for you to do a little bit of extra reading. You know, look at um a few studies, for example, and try and cram these in essentially right before your exams. So you don't have to go through the pain of memorizing them beforehand. If you include this extra information, it's a sure way for you to impress the examiners and to push your grade up. And I also wanna be clear that um you don't have to necessarily do extra reading outside of the entire medicine course. You can very much include information from outside that particular module and that would count as extra reading. So let's say, for example, you're writing an essay in of physiology that lends itself quite well to including content from your biochemistry module. And that would count as extra reading. So it doesn't have to be as painful as I've suggested. So this um second method is a bit more wishy washy. It's a bit more waff to explain, but I've called it the finesse method. And it's essentially where you focus a lot on your structure. So this here is a more in depth exam um mark scheme and I've highlighted here a few key words that show up in the mark scheme that will, that you need to, you know, include in order to push your mark up. So let's take a look here at the words they've used, they want your arguments and presentation to be stylish. The approach may be original critical or unorthodox. So again, that sounds a bit waff, it sounds a bit wishy washy, but hopefully I can deconstruct it a bit and er, explain it to you er, in a bit more detail. So, first of all, let's take a look at this point about originality. So uh a, a point I should have made earlier as well. Sorry is that, you know, when, by the time you get to your end of year exams and you're writing essays for your final exams, it's a lot easier in my opinion because you've learnt all the content or you should have learnt all the content or you'll be a lot more comfortable with the content compared to when you're writing essays during term time. You know, the challenge that comes with writing essays during term time is that you're still learning all the material at the same time and that's where the pressure comes in because, you know, if you don't, if you don't learn the content there and then, um, you're gonna have to either leave it to the holidays or leave it till later. And so it means that, you know, your essayer, you're gonna be spending so much time researching your essay that you might get sidetracked from focusing on your other subjects. But I don't want to scare you. You know, um, you will learn the content and be able to write really good essays. But once you've learnt that content, it is quite easy to essentially just regurgitate what you've learnt from the lecture notes in your essay. And again, you know, it's not inherently bad, it will give you a decent 21. But if you wanna be original, then you need to go beyond what you've learnt in. So you need to go beyond um what you've been explicitly taught. And one way to do that is to make comparisons to what you already know. So essentially here, what I'm talking about is being able to see the bigger picture. So often times um you'll learn things almost in isolation and the lecturers will leave it to you to make the connections between all of these different topics. And if you are able to make these connections and you're able to write this in your essay, that's a great way for you to show originality. So let's say, for example, um if we go back to the example of um the essay on transduction uh between the auditory and visual systems although I've only been asked explicitly about these two systems, I could bring in another sensory system to try and illustrate a general point that I'm making. But the reason why this is a, why I've called it the finesse method is because it's quite a narrow line to walk. You know, you need to make sure that you don't become irrelevant in what you're saying, that you're still sticking to the question. But it's ultimately something that with enough practice you will get better at. And let's take a look at the second word here. Critical. So uh Cambridge loves to think of. Cambridge loves for us to as medical students to consider ourselves as, you know, clinicians and academics. You know, they really love the idea or the doctor, not only is interacting with patients, but the idea of the doctor being an academic. And therefore whenever you're learning things in lectures, there's a really big emphasis, not just on the facts themselves but how they found out about these discoveries and the actual, you know, experimental procedures that have led to these discoveries in the first place. So if you include some of these experiments in your essays, it's a really good way to set yourself apart. And not only is it um good to include these experiments, it's really good if you're able to critique them in some way. And you know, one way of doing this, for example, is uh let's say, for example, there's a discovery that was made using a certain kind of technology, but that kind of technology might have been superseding now. So if you do a bit of extra reading and talk about the technology that is now being used, um that is a really good way to show the examiners that you have a really, you know, holistic view of the topic and that you've been critical of the evidence. So hopefully that hasn't been too waff. But I really hope that you kind of got the idea that this kind of second finesse method requires you to think a bit outside the box. It requires you to make connections that might not be explicitly taught to you. Because I think, um as I've said, you know, there's a lot to memorize and uh to a certain extent, it's a bit easier to memorize than it is to make those original connections yourself. But I think that's what makes this kind of essay writing rewarding because it allows you to show off the connections that you're making yourself. Right. Examiners reports. So, in my opinion, these are some of the most valuable resources for when it comes to preparing for your final exams. So just like you have examiners reports at a levels, you'll also have examiners reports for the exams you sit uh in Cambridge and they're fairly simple to find, if you just type in Cambridge medicine examiners reports, you'll be able to find them, you know, you'll need to log in to the Raven system, but they're all there for you to see and they have a really kind of in depth coverage of examiners reports. You know, they span back sometimes 10, maybe even 15 years and they're pretty well available for each subject. Do these examiners' reports cover everything basically, you know, the MC QS, the Practicals, the essays, these are all covered in some detail in the examiner's reports and they go into detail about what people did. Well, what people didn't do so well in and what's really helpful for essay writing is that they often go through each individual essay title that was set that year and they sometimes give a kind of a skeleton answer of what they were looking four. And so therefore, these examiners reports are a really valuable tool for essay planning because at the end of the day, you know, these courses have been running it to some extent unchanged for 1015 years sometimes. And so there's only a limited amount of stuff that they can ask you about. Uh another point I should have made clear, sorry is that you can find um essay titles online just in general. Um The there are past papers generally available for each subject. Although that does vary, you know, some subjects, if they haven't updated it for a while, they're generally a bit more secretive because they kind of reuse the questions each year. So let's say for example, all, uh, physiology, er, you take it in first year and they're quite secretive about their past papers. I think they only have it from around 2000 to 2009. And that's because they really do reuse the questions each year. But for the most part, there are lots of passed papers available for MT QS Practicals and essays. So, yeah, look out for these examiners reports and use them, you know, use them to plan essays, use them to potentially go above and beyond what you're being taught in your lectures. So just to wrap things up a bit, I've got a few tips here, some final tips to go home with. So give it a go, you know, there are gonna be times where you feel really underprepared, you feel like you haven't had the time to learn the content in detail, but you just have to bite the bullet and start writing sometimes and kind of linked into that. You know, you don't have to be a perfectionist for your supervision, essays, you know, the essays that you're writing during term time, you're not gonna have had the time to really learn in depth, the stuff from the, the lectures. And so it's ok if um it's ok if you feel like your essay isn't that up to scratch because ultimately you're gonna have the time to learn the content well enough to write really good essays in your final exams that being said, make the use, make the best use of the supervision essays, uh you know, a really, but their purpose is to give you feedback about your essays and you need to take this into account, you know, your supervisors often times, um they might be on the board for marking essays themselves. And so they will have a really good idea of what a good essay is and what a not so good essay is. So, take into account their feedback. So, number four, in my opinion is one of the, the most important take home messages and that is do a lot of reading, do a lot of reading of other people's essays. So I've given you a few hints here of some of my essays and some of the diagrams from other people. But in general, um, there are college med socks that have their own Google Drives, er, that are available for the people in each college and often times they will have kind of essay banks where people will submit essays that they've written previously. And I think these are some of the most valuable resources, you know, almost as valuable as the examiner's reports because it's only by reading the work of others, in my opinion that you're able to really, you know, understand the finesse, you need an essay writing to see, you know, ok, this is how someone else does it and you can therefore take it into your own essay. Writing. And finally, I think, you know, on a similar note, youtube is a really good resource for essay writing. So there are lots of Cambridge medics who have made youtube videos. You know, I'm sure you might know a few of them. And there are quite a few videos about how to really push your grades up in essays and get a first class essay. You know, they're a bit click bait sometimes, but they are really valuable. So if there's one video that I would recommend it would be worn by Rohani Sudan. So he is, I believe a final year medic at Robinson. And he's got a really good video from I think it's last year where he goes into detail about how to push your essay into a first class. And he kind of goes through what I've talked about today, you know, having a strong introduction using active subheadings being critical, being original and he uses his own essays as an example. So that is a really valuable video to watch in my opinion. And there are lots of other videos too. But yeah, definitely don't underestimate how useful youtube can be. So that's it for me. Um If you do have any questions, I think there have been quite a few questions in the chat, please feel free to leave them and yeah, you know, enjoy the next 10 days or so. Um You're gonna have a really great time studying here and you know, you're gonna face some challenges, but I really want to make sure that, you know, you understand this message, there will be challenges, but you are gonna be able to rise up to them and you're gonna be able to, you know, surmount things that you would have never thought possible. I know it sounds a bit dramatic but you know, you're gonna be able to push yourself beyond what you would have expected. and it's a really rewarding year. You're gonna learn a lot about yourself and you're gonna have a great time. So, thank you. And I think um I guess we'll start looking at the questions now. Yeah. Thank you so much, Moy for that presentation. Uh I hope you all found it useful. Um I'll get on to the questions now. Um So one that seems quite popular is uh how do we make a diagram and an exam if we have to type them? So I should have made that clearer. So you do have paper in your exams, they call it in spirit of paper because that's the name of the exam platform. But yeah, you know, you do have paper to sketch down your diagrams and to label them and there's a code in the question that you can write down on the sheet of paper and it makes sure that that diagram will be linked to whatever you're writing in the text. And I'll just go back a few slides to um, the second essay, er, the second diagram that I included. So I drew this on my ipad. Um, and I think that's fairly common for supervision essays. And, you know, you don't have to, please don't feel like you have to go out and buy an ipad surely for the purpose of, um, writing diagrams. You know, you can very much write them by hand on paper because that's ultimately what you're gonna be doing in the exams. Yeah. Um And that answers another question as well. Somebody asked, uh are we only allowed to include diagrams if they're hand drawn? So, like you said, if you draw them on the ipad, you can submit those for your supervisions as well. Um Do the weekly essays require a lot of research or are the lecture content and notes sometimes enough? Yeah. So I'd say that definitely uh lecture notes should make up the basis, you know, the vast majority of your essay. Yeah, you shouldn't have to do research in the sense that you're looking at. I don't know, like textbooks and journal articles. You can do that. Of course if you want to kind of elevate your essay. But uh it, that's, that's what makes the supervision essays quite tricky, in my opinion, is the fact that, you know, you don't have that much time in time, time to really learn the content, the level where you're able to write an essay about it. But I think it's important that you do try to write essays only once you have a fairly solid understanding of the content. Because ultimately, you know, that's how it's gonna be in the exams. You're not gonna be able to, you know, have Google next to you in the exams. So, you know, it is difficult but I would definitely recommend trying to base most of your essays from the lecture content and, you know, you will get a lot of information from your lectures. Er, so you get given generally most if not all lecturers give a set of slides and they also give a set of lecture notes and you can only be examined on what is in the lecture notes and those slides, they can't assess anything outside of this. So it's good on the one hand, because you have all the information you need to learn. But then on the other hand, it is a lot of information. But if you work on this material, you'll be in a really good place for writing your essays. Um, somebody asked, um, could you request more essays from certain supervisors or modules if you want to get more practice? Yeah, definitely. I mean, uh some of my supervisors, for example, they gave us a list of past essay questions and they just said to us, you know, at the end of the day, you're at university, your learning is very much independent. And if doing more essays or something you want to do by all means, go ahead. You know, I'm sure your supervisors will be more than happy to mark them. But, yeah, it's definitely something you can do. Um, do you have any recommendations on where to read about the content for the essays? Yeah. So in general, um, as I said, lecture content, lecture notes is really good if you do wanna do some additional reading, uh usually the lecturers at the start of each lecture series will give you um some textbooks, for example, er if you wanna do some extra reading, you know, there'll be kind of set textbooks that you'll be told about. So I don't think you necessarily need to worry about it at the moment. I think once you start having these lectures, then the lecturers will be recommending um potential extra reading for you. And of course, there's Google, you know, you can just Google anything you want and look at it from that Satwa. Um a couple of people have asked about referencing, so any tips on referencing and then also do need to memorize citations or formal referencing in the end of your essays. Yeah. So I should have made that clearer. You don't need to reference for these essays for the most part. Yeah. If you're writing your essays based on your lecture content, then you don't need to reference. If you're doing extra reading, then of course, you know, you can name drop an author, you can name drop, you know, a research group or whatever, but it's not like, uh you know, you don't need to use Harvard referencing or anything. It is very much more just a stream of information, you know, to, there's no need for referencing really. Um Would you say it's better to start essay, practice referring to notes while writing and then um when, OK, not sure what that means but uh referring to notes while writing so not fully open book, but occasionally referencing and then building up to closed book. Or should we start off closed book and improve the quality of the essays with practice? Um I think there's no harm with the first approach, you know, essay writing is, I think it comes with quite a steep learning curve. So I think there's no point necessarily kind of hurting yourself and forcing yourself to do a closed book essay straight from the start. But that being said, you know, make sure you can get to the point where you can write closed book essays. But during term time for your supervision, essays, you know, when you're writing your essay plans, by all means, use your lecture content, use your lecture notes. But I think once you've got that essay plan, then try and write them as closed book essays with this essay plan. Um So somebody's asked, uh you kind of touched on this, but somebody's asked how many words should you aim to write for essays set by supervisors for homework in brackets, not in timed conditions. Um, so even though it won't be like exam conditions, you know, no one's gonna cut you off after an hour. I would still very much write to the same kind of time conditions. So, you know, if you get s, uh, an essay in an exam where you would have an hour to write it, I would aim to write an hour worth of material. So again, you know, it's not something to aim towards, but you can write around 1000 to 1200 words in that kind of time limit. But yeah, basically, even if you're writing a supervision essay, try and write it under the same conditions as you would in the exam. But again, of course, it is very difficult at the start. Um What's the pass mark for exams? Um So it's quite variable. Um It is publicly available as well. You can just type in like pass marks for Cambridge medicine. And I think in general it will vary, but I wanna say the lowest is maybe 45%. So II should make this clear. So this is kind of for the second MB. Um cos that's the thing that you need to pass to pass the year. So II think it varies from around 45%. Maybe the highest it goes up to is maybe 60. Uh but this is for the second MB. So, you know, it's excluding your essays. Um, ok. How many words should you put under each subheading? Um, I think in general for each of your paragraphs, uh, I think it's kind of hard to give a word amount. I think in general just, you know, make a point flesh it out into a paragraph and then leave it at that move on to another paragraph. Um, uh, so I can't give you like a, a hard figure but I think it will, it will come naturally to you. You know, you'll, you'll know when a paragraph is done. Um, somebody asked, is there a spell check on in there is, but it's quite slow. So sometimes I think, um, you'll be typing away and then you'll look back and then there'll be a lot of stuff underlined and red. But there is, as it won't automatically correct, as far as I'm aware, you do still have to manually go back and make the changes yourself. Um Is there a place where you can find model essays from older years? Yeah. So, um, there are quite a few places. So, as I've said, the examiners reports, sometimes they will give you kind of skeleton answers and sometimes they'll give you full blown essays. Um, sometimes so the mood or page you'll become quite familiar with it is essentially the hub for your subject. It's where lectures will be posted and it's where you'll find the past papers and they'll often times include, um, that's where they might give you examples of past essays from previous students. So for example, um the Moor for Pharmacology this year, they had, I think around two essays from previous students that were marked and they had comments on them. So that was really useful. And um I also did mention about Google Drives. And so in general, um each college will have its own med talk and of course, there's a uni wide med talk and they'll have their own resource centers where people have contributed essays. So it will vary from college to college. But in general, you know, each essay, sorry, each college will have their own set of resources that might include past essays. Yeah. Um Thank you. Um And for those of you, darling, I think Moyes is in the Whitby Committee. Is that right? Yeah. Um OK. Uh Should you be learning statistics from studies for essays? Um I think it, it just de it depends. I think. So when I say, you know, doing extra reading, looking at studies, I think it's very context dependent dependent on the point you're trying to make. Um you know, if it is relevant to the point you're trying to make and it is just, you know, a pretty simple figure. Uh I don't know, let's just say an example. Um maybe you read a study where they, you know, knock out a gene in a mouse and it reduces the expression of something by 50% you know, that would be an example of a statistic you could include. But, yeah, you, I don't think you have to worry too much about those kinds of statistics. I think it's, it's very context dependent. Um, what tools did you use to practice typing? Um, I think there are quite a few websites where you can just, it gives you like a minute and there's like a passage that you have to type out and it, it's, it's kind of fun sometimes. But, yeah, I mean, if you're just typing, like, typing speed test, there's one called monkey type as well, but it's quite fun but it's just, it's like a minute and you, you practice typing and, you know, you can make quite quick improvements. Yeah. II think your general typing is a pretty good skill to have. Um, so again you touched on this, but do you recommend getting an ipad or is the laptop? Fine. Um, I think, yeah, please. Yeah, if don't feel like you have to go out and buy an ipad, I think it can be pretty useful. So I personally have, um, an ipad, I think probably the most common combination you'll find is people will have a Macbook and they'll have an ipad Air. Um, you'll see loads of it in the lecture halls. Er, but obviously, you know, that's not available to everyone. So please don't feel like you have to go out and buy an ipad, you know, there are definitely times where I feel like I don't use my ipad as much as I should. You know, you can definitely definitely get by just using your laptop. But your ipad is useful. You know, you have the apple pencil where you can write diagrams, you can annotate lectures. That's where I use it mostly. But, you know, please don't feel like you have to go out and buy an ipad. Um Do we reference for the supervision essays? So, yeah, again, um you don't have to really reference for these essays. If you do any extra reading, then by all means include it. But yeah, um and then somebody's just asking you to clarify if you need subheadings for your essays or just separate paragraphs for separate points. So you don't have to include subheadings. But in my opinion, it's uh you know, using these active subheadings is a really great way. So I'm to touching this, it's a really great way for you to uh have a nice cohesive answer and to push your grade up. So I would personally recommend using these active subheadings, but they're definitely not necessary, you know, you can get a good mark just by having, you know, a body of text, but I personally would recommend using these are active sub tings. Um And then lastly, I don't know if this person actually wants to know, but somebody's asking what's your, I think it means words per minute. Um I think it peaked at, like I wanna say 90 to 100 which I'm like, I'm quite happy about. So, um, we've just got another question come in. What does it mean when the ar when they say the argument and presentation should be stylish? Yeah. So that's what I was kind of talking about how it can be a bit wishy washy when they're in terms of what they're looking for. Um, in my opinion, having a stylish argument and presentation is about having a nice blowing argument throughout. Um, you know, using the active subheadings constantly linking back to the essay title. I think that would, that would be a stylish argument in my opinion. Awesome, thanks. Um I think that's all the questions. Um Thank you so much, Moy for giving that presentation. Uh And I hope you all found it very useful. Um If anybody does have any questions, um, feel free to pop it in the chat. Um And actually, if you could fill out a feedback form, I'm just gonna put the link um in the chat in a moment. Bear with me and while I'm doing this, just a reminder that we will be having um our next talk uh for an intro for all the different um subjects that you have in first year. Um So please do attend that if you want to know kind of what, what to expect when you go into first year. Um And again, if you could fill out the feedback form. It's in the chat. That would be amazing. Thank you so much for coming. Cool. Thank you. Thank you.