Experience of Summer Exchange

                                                                                                              Cao Jiachen 2021·Biology·CHC

Attending the course of study, the International Medicine and Health Summer Programme, at Girton College, University of Cambridge between Sunday 23 July, and Saturday 5 August 2023, I have benefited a lot. Here's what I've learned from this experience.

First of all, this course covers a wide range of aspects in medicine and health, with breadth as the main and depth as the supplement, mainly playing a guiding role, providing us with an opportunity to discover the direction we are interested in. Through this learning process, I found that I was more interested in “Prevention”, and chose Alzheimer's disease prevention as the final presentation content of this course.

According to Dr Cooke, who is a lecturer of this course, studying is a lifelong thing. Not only should we study for getting a higher score, but also we should study for ourselves, for our future, for being a better person. The most important thing in studying is self-directed learning. To study in an efficient way, we definitely should set goals for ourselves during each step of our learning process and check in a timely manner.

Read widely. Literature reading should be done every day, just like the need for lifelong learning. It is very important to learn from the previous generation, to accumulate experience, and to develop ourselves. Literature reading is the foundation of scientific research, and it is necessary to develop the habit of reading papers. Although the initial stage is really hard, it will all be easier soon. If you meet difficulties and overcome them, you will reach new horizons and go wherever you want to go.

Follow through with our English studies. In lectures, most of the basic spoken content spoken by professors can be easily understood, but when it came to some specialized vocabulary, like proper nouns for diseases, that was pretty hard. So it is a must to accumulate in a daily routine. In daily communication, some things I wanted to express I found that I couldn't say them in English at once. After two weeks of communication, I realized that the deeper part of it should be to express myself directly in English, rather than forming Chinese in my head and needing to translate it before I could say it. To realize this process, there is a need to study English every day. To further challenge myself, I need to take the IELTS test, constantly urge myself to learn English, and maintain the habit of using English.

Think logically and critically. All work needs to have an outline at the beginning, to decide the order of our work, so that it will be very clear in the work afterward. For example, for the final presentation, we need to choose a topic and decide on the structure of the presentation. Our group chose Alzheimer's disease as the theme of the report and sorted out the order:Introduction→Body (current situation→possible causes and physical changes→prevention→palliation)→Conclusion. After that, each person was assigned what he/she was responsible for, which made the work very efficient and clear. At the same time, we didn't discuss the logic at the beginning. Members put forward suggestions, discussed, and applied the logic we all agreed on. Therefore, teamwork is also very important.

Study history. Learning to analyze the changes in diseases in the period and summarize the methods of human beings to deal with infectious diseases, to have a certain sense of smell (sensitivity) in the face of similar situations in the future. To improve, learn from, and study the historical methods, and learn to look back, to be able to avoid making the same mistakes.