Workload in first year Health and Medical Science

The HMS is a unique and interesting course that Warwick has only started running this year. Because of this I felt that it would be useful to share to any prospective HMS students what the workload is like.

• Online Lectures: This makes up the largest part of my workload. Going through and making notes for each lecture is an incredibly time-consuming task that you must plan a significant amount of time to do. Usually, we would have up to 8-10 lectures a week that were roughly between 45mins- hour long. However, if you want to make notes each lecture can take up to 2 to 2.30 hours to get through.

• TEL: TELs are online workbooks. Similarly, to lectures, these can be incredibly time consuming. However, each week there are usually only 3 TELs to go through. It is important to treat TELs just as importantly as lectures as the content covered in them may come up in exams.

• Coursework: In the HMS a significant portion of your grade for each module is dependent on coursework. The amount of time spent on coursework is dependent on the type of coursework it is for example; it may be an essay or a presentation. For me, I found essays to be incredibly time consuming. Essays require not only a significant amount of planning and preparation but the process of writing them, adding references and a bibliography, as well as reading through and checking your work can make coursework difficult to get through.

• Extra revision: This may consist of making flashcards or making extra notes. Extra revision is an incredibly important part of the week that I wish I had made more time for. You don’t need to go overboard but scheduling one or two extra hours a week to ensure you are properly learning your course content can make a world of difference.

Overall, this is what my typical workload looked like in my first year doing the HMS. The content covered in the HMS is covered in great depth and breadth which makes the workload at times difficult to manage. However, my greatest advice is to be organised when dealing with this workload, it is surprising how much planning your day using a planner or journal can make.