No•Bad•Days

Hi beautiful friends,

As mentioned in my intro and as my name suggests it I am a medical student, now in my 4th year (out of 6). My story has nothing impressive about it, but I remember being in high school and searching for information that would help me and finding…. NOTHING, or at least nothing in the same place.

I decided to pursue the medical dream during my first year of high school. I was 15 and I don’t remember the day I particularly decided on this, or even why exactly. It had something to do with me becoming super passionate about genetics, around winter 2012. Before that, what I’ve always wanted to become was an actress. For me, there was no in between. 🙂

When something sticks to my mind, it just has to happen.

SOOOO….

I decided to attend the Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest. I thought a little bit about leaving my country and studying medicine elsewhere in Europe, but I was way too young and unprepared, I had already met my boyfriend and the decision to leave was just something too much for me to decide upon at that time.

Many young high school graduates decide to leave the country and study in a different one.

Unfortunately, in Romania, the wages and working conditions are quite low, compared to other European countries. The general minimum salary is of 1,263 RON, which is about 265 Euros or 300$ (the net salary= exactly what the employee brings home). The gross salary in this case (before taxes are paid) is 2,080 RON.

The average take-home salary in Romania in 2019 is around 2,700 RON per month (570 Euros or $645). The good part about this is that the average salary kept on growing – slowly but steadily – over the past few years. Compared to 2013, for example, the average wage increased by about 230 Euros, which is a 67% increase.

For more about why Romanian students and even doctors choose to leave the country here.

Anyways, coming back to our original topic, in Romania there are three big and valuable Universities of Medicine and Pharmacy, that appear in worldwide tops and are classified as being truly good:

• Carol Davila University of Medicine & Pharmacy – in Bucharest
• Grigore T Popa University of Medicine & Pharmacy- in Iași
• Iuliu Hatieganu University of Medicine & Pharmacy- in Cluj-Napoca

Of course, there are many more Universities of Medicine in Romania, in all the beautiful cities all around the country: in Brașov, Constanța, Sibiu, Timișoara, Târgu Mureș and so on, so forth.

Being born in Bucharest and deciding to keep on studying in Romania, my decision was quite simple as I went for Carol Davila University. This University now comprises 3 major colleges:

• Faculty of Medicine (in English and Romanian)- 6 study years
• Faculty of Dentistry (in Romanian)-6 study years
• Faculty of Pharmacy (in Romanian)- 5 study years

The fee is €6000 per year for undergraduate studies. The same fee is applied for EU and non-EU students and the tuition fee can be paid in installments.

For the Romanian residents that want to attend the faculty of Medicine the admission exam consists of 100 questions from human anatomy and physics/chemistry, according to your choice. More about that here.

You can also find more about the admission requirements and procedure here, but I would definitely check with the official site (which i tagged before) for extra and more accurate details.

For more about the medical Universities in Romania, I would suggest this websites:

• https://www.studyinginromania.com/romanian-medical-university-studies.html
• https://www.studymedicineeurope.com/medical-university-romania
• https://medstudentadvisors.com/bucharest_medical_university.html
• http://www.euroeducation.net/articles/why-study-medicine-in-romania.htm
• https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/romania/clinical-medicine
• https://www.eu-medstudy.com/study-medicine-in-romania/#university-of-medicine-cluj-napoca

There are definitely more, so let me know if you have any suggestion so I can just update the list!

Coming back to my story… After deciding upon Carol Davila University, my parents got me a tutor to help me with my admission exam, which in late July I attended and passed with an amazing grade that turned me into a medical student.

There was nothing special or fancy which requires me to write about from those days. I just followed the steps I had to, was super focused and studied for most of my time, all in order to achieve my dream.

In Bucharest, the 6 years of medical school are divided into: 3 pre-clinical years (years 1-3) and 3 clinical years (years 4-6). Afterwards, you have the graduation exam and the residency exam, which I’ll keep for later.

The first three years are though, the competition is immense and you are faced with all sorts of self-doubts and worries: “will I make it?”, “am I good enough?”, “can i study this much?”. But as the years pass and you realize you can actually learn and remember more than you could ever imagine, the answers come easily: “yes, I will make it”, “yes, I am good enough”.

In the first year you are introduced with anatomy, cellular biology, biophysics, biochemistry, genetics, psychology, physiology, and even marketing or English (for the Romanian residents).

The journey in the second year continues with anatomy and physiology, but cellular biology now becomes histology and more subjects are introduced, such as: microbiology, biostatistics and informatics. Physiology takes up a lot of time and is demanding and hard to understand, but together with anatomy they create the basis for everything that will come.

The third year is somewhat like a transition year. You are first introduced into the hospital through semiology and are allowed, or even more obliged to talk to the patients and perform a full body clinical examination. This year you also study pharmacology, pathophysiology, pathology, ethics, virology and parasitology.

For every subject you have to attend the course and the laboratory. The classes take up most of your day and sometimes are all around the city, but you are not alone and it becomes fun and you get to make tons of friends. At the end, you have a practical exam, which is eliminatory and sometimes it matters at the final grade and afterwards, the final exam. Exams are grouped into two major exam sessions: one around February, and one around June. These exam sessions are demanding and exhausting in all possible ways.

Fortunately, everything changes with the start of the fourth year, when you have clinical rotations. By the end of the last year, you will have been to probably every hospital in Bucharest, talked to hundreds of patients and rotated through every single medical specialization. You now have no exam sessions, which is such a huge relief and are at the hospital from 8 in the morning to about 13 in the afternoon.

I am half way now and this journey will soon come to an end. Was it easy?No f***ing way. Would I do it again? YES, f*** I would.

Until my next post about med school, I’ll let you with a quotation from the book Slow Medicine by Victoria Sweet, which I highly recommend.

“Medicine is not only a craft and a science, but an art. It had something unexplainable about it, which was its heart.”

Victoria Sweet, Slow Medicine