Studying at university requires lots of sacrifices. We must give up on many other activities, and hobbies in order to study. However there’s a man, who’s a great counter-example to this: Gábor Orbán, a third-year medical student, a mentoree of the Kerpel-Fronius program, the youngest medical student, who has ever won a National Higher Education Scholarship, and he works as both a demonstrator and student-researcher.
Szinapszis: Please, Tell us a bit about yourself!
Gábor Orbán: I just started my third year of medical school. I’m really motivated, mostly because now our teachers treat us as equals compared to our first two years. This attitude is much more productive, since this way students feel much less frustrated, we’re finally close to studying in clinical modules.
Sz.: Besides studying you also do many other things connected to the university. What are these?
O.: I work actively as a demonstrator in anatomy and biochemistry, I will also teach lessons to the second years. I’m looking forward to it, because I can gain a lot of useful experiences. I can learn a lot from the students’ questions, and I hope they can learn a lot from me too.
Aside of this, I also do research at the Institute of Physiology. I really took a liking to physiology during my second year, luckily even during my fourth semester I got a chance to get a closer look into the inner workings of the department, and its many ongoing researches. Right now, I’m looking into a smaller aspect of signal-transduction. It’s great to see the professional calling, both on my consultant, and on the two international students, who are also taking part in the research. I want to keep working on this in the future. Not necessarily as exclusively a researcher, I know a person in the department, who works as an anesthesiologist, but also does some research.
Sz.: Am I right in thinking, that you still have more things you do?
O.: You could say that. I take part in the Kerpel-Fronius program for talent development. Contrary to some other experiences, I really think I have a great mentor, who I can talk to about basically anything. There are also many other events for people in the program. I applied for this in my second semester, I feel I owe a lot to this program. Furthermore I’m in the National Higher Education Scholarship program, which (I’m proud to say) only about 0.05% of students get to take part in.
Sz.: One might assume, that after all of these responsibilities, when you finally get home all you do study a bit more, and that’s the end of your day…
O.: Luckily that isn’t the case at all! I try hard to exercise regularly, every weekend I play football in my county team, on weekdays I go running. I think it’s important for students to not wall themselves off from the world. It’s noticeable how all students talk about is the university, they don’t talk about everyday topics at all. This will also be important in the future, because effective communication with our patients is vital, and they don’t speak our “language”
Sz.: Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share with our readers?
O.: I would encourage students, to not give up on their hobbies, or if they don’t have one, finding one is a great idea. It’s incredibly common for social media to take up a lot of time during studying. It’s easy to get lost, once you’ve checked your daily feed, you might as well check your messages, and of course if someone is active, you don’t hesitate to write them, and I could go on and on. This wastes a lot of time, and your work becomes less effective. If instead, before studying you spend a couple of hours on your hobby, then you can sit down to study feeling much more relaxed, and motivated. I guarantee your work will also be much more effective. Obviously, this won’t make you a straight “A” student (I’m not one either), but it’s good to keep this in mind. We often neglect everything to study, but to me it seems like those people, who spend time on their hobbies, and other activities outside of university tend to do much better. Naturally, everyone has to find the perfect balance for themselves, however it’s important for everyone to keep their own identities both inside, and outside of school.