Page 26
Jessica O’Logbon, Medical Student
Interview Kaye Holland
I have just completed half of medical school at King's College and I am currently at Cambridge doing a research Masters, looking at the effects covid has had on mental health. After this, I will go back to medical school, finish and become a doctor. I started Progress with Jess as a side project during the pandemic and from that I mentor students hoping to get into medical school and I help current schools thrive within it. I share a lot of tips for professional and personal development. I also decided to change to e-commerce and sell a book on relocating as a doctor abroad.
I did quite well at GCSEs and I really liked science and I could see myself doing a career that was quite challenging. When I got to A-level, I still did well, but with medicine when it comes to applying it is a very long process and there are a lot of hurdles to jump over. You need to take entrance exams, you need to be prepared for interviews and you need to be 100% sure you want to do medicine and be able to articulate it in a way that impresses an interview. At 18, I just didn’t have that and that was because of a wide range of reasons. I am state school educated and my school was encouraging in terms of telling me that I had the grades and could go for it, but in terms of support it is limited. The best people to inform you on these things are admissions tutor and current students and when you’re in a state school, you just don’t have that.
A lot of my peers at medical school are privately educated. I think it is the most inherited career in university. Pretty much all of my friends are doctors.
I ended up taking a gap because I hadn’t gone into the course I had my heart set on and I thought the best thing for me to do was to take a year out and think “is it really for me.” And I got a job as a healthcare assistant at a NHS hospital near home and I went abroad and I did clinical in the Dominican Republic and I 100% knew that it was something I could see myself doing everyday.
I got into university in the end and of course I had a lot more experiences to share. Working for the NHS was a great opportunity. It will shape you. At 18, I had seen and experienced things that other 18-year-old’s hadn't. I was washing patients, I had seen dead bodies, I’d had had to tell families that their families were dead. I was doing a lot of things that I would have to do as a future doctor anyway, which was impressive in interviews. During medical school, i've been a very big believer in stepping outside of your comfort zone. When you’re a young person and you don’t get into university, all your friends do, and your parents begin to stress thinking you have no future ahead of you, but if you find what you like and what you’re passionate about, keep trying even when you get knocked back.
There were challenges when I got to medical school. In my first year like many people, you’re floundering, you’re trying to learn and adjust to a new way of learning. I really struggled with my confidence in first and second year and it was only when I started forcing myself to join societies and actually sign up for jobs like being an ambassador that I got better at articulating myself and public speaking.