 What is up guys Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. Finally back in England, I'm in London, I'm in my room getting ready to start school in a couple of days. Things are going to ramp up pretty fast so I want to record a video. Today I'm going to do a Q&A. I know I've been saying I'm going to do a Q&A for a couple of weeks now so hopefully you guys have gone in all the questions you want and we're going to answer them today in this video. Before I start this video maybe some of you are wondering, Oi Karma Medic where you been? I've been on vacation. Toronto, let's get right into the Q&A. I've asked you guys for questions for the Q&A over on my YouTube videos and also on my Instagram page. If you don't follow my Instagram page, follow it right here. I post pictures and videos about my life. Now I'm going to be starting my second year at KCL. I'm going to be posting a lot more things about the hospital, the GP placements and also the school. So let me whip out my trusty laptop. Alright, let's see. Napisa? Napisa? Are you in your first, second, third, fourth or fifth year? So I just finished my first year at KCL. I'm going into my second year. This will be my second degree. MxO asks, what did you study for undergrad the first time? Was it science or medicine related? Love the vids. Thank you so much. Yes, it was science medicine related. I did two majors and one minor. My majors were genes genetics and biotechnology. Then I did molecular genetics and microbiology and then I did a minor in immunology as well. Honestly, if you're doing your undergrad in science, I would suggest you do it in whatever field you find most interesting. You don't have to do biomedical sciences. You don't have to do biochemistry. Choose something that you really, really like and go for it. It's going to be a lot more fun than studying something generic for a couple of years. OG Murray? Why the name Karma Medic? Good question. I'm surprised this hasn't come up for a long time. So my full name is actually Nasser Karma and so Karma is kind of playing on words on karma. Good karma, bad karma. So I thought I'd come up with Karma Medic and I've drawn it up there as you can see. Hadia Jami? I hope I don't butcher any of your names. I'm sorry if I do. Hadia Jami asks, what languages can you speak? I can speak fluent English and Arabic. I also studied Spanish in high school and for a year at university for about three or four years, but I would say I'm conversational at best. And then I lived in Greece for most of my life, so I can understand Greek very, very well, but I don't speak it as well as I would like to. Tesco and Sainsbury meal deal. Multiple people asked this question, but I found your name the funniest, so I'm going to include you in this video. Where are you from? So this is a bit of a long story. I'll try and do the TLDR version. Basically my original heritage is Palestinian Jordanian. I was born in Vancouver, Canada, and then very shortly after I moved to Athens, Greece, where I lived for about 18 years. Why I feel most is home for me is Athens, Greece. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. I'm not entirely sure to answer your question. Are any other of you guys like that where you're like really, really international from a lot of different places? If you are, let me know. MK asks, why is there an orange dog on your table? I have no idea what you're talking about. So I have a message here on Instagram and this person asks, why actually go you interested in medicine? Were you interested in something else before starting medicine? So I guess I'll tackle the second part first. I was not interested in anything else. Ever since I was a kid, I sort of just knew that I wanted to do medicine. Of course I didn't really know what that meant when I was younger, but I was always interested in the field. I was interested in what doctors were doing. And I wanted to learn more. The way that I actually got interested in medicine was I just really enjoyed science at school, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you like medicine, right? I tried to find as many opportunities that I could that would show me what medicine really was. So I started volunteering in hospital laboratories. I shadowed an orthopedic surgeon. Nope, I shadowed a cardiothoracic surgeon. That was the first doctor that I shadowed. So I spent some time in the hospital and I sort of got to see what the doctors actually do. What is it like inside of a hospital? Because before that, all I knew about doctor-patient experience was when I went to see a doctor. And that's a really, really minimal narrow aspect of what doctors really do. When I was going through these experiences, I was trying to understand what is medicine. You know, there's the research aspect to it. There's the patient aspect to it. There's the doctor aspect to it. There's so much more than just the doctor-patient consultation. And through those experiences in the hospitals, shadowing doctors, I sort of got to understand what medicine is. And I realized, okay, this is actually in line with what I want to do. And so I pursued it further. This one was asked by Kiran Bahavra. How come you didn't apply for graduate entry medicine? So I get this question a lot. The reason I didn't apply to graduate entry medicine was that I'm an international student and I just thought that the competitiveness would be too high for me. So as a non-domestic, non-EU student, I knew that my chances for getting accepted were quite low. And I didn't want to further increase that by applying to graduate entry medicine. If you look at the numbers for the standard entry medicine and the graduate entry medicine, the graduate entry is always more competitive. So I thought to myself, I'm willing to take that risk. I'm willing to do an extra year on my total degree length. But I just want to start medicine. I want to get started now and get focused on medicine. So this is a question I got over on the student room quite some time ago, back when I was on the senior reforms every single day, trying to help answer questions and whatnot. So someone asks, how do you track your time? Do you take breaks? Do you work in chunks? Do you or do you just work for four hours straight? How I track my time is just my watch or my phone or whatever. I don't really use any app that like tells you to work for this amount of time and then take a break for this amount of time. How I work is in four hour chunks, which I know sounds like a huge amount for some people, but I don't find it difficult to stay focused. I don't get distracted easily. So I like to work in four hour chunks and then take a two hour break. I know this sounds kind of crazy for a lot of people. For example, my sister, she works in 15 minutes, then five minutes, 15, then five, which I think is like some tomato timer thing. You guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but it really depends on you. See what works for you. You want to strike a balance between the amount of time you can stay focused and actually do useful work and you also need to complete enough work in the day. So if you can only focus for 15 minutes, but you only study for an hour a day, obviously you're not doing enough, right? So you want to strike that balance. Someone else from the studio room, hey, thanks for your reply. How do you avoid procrastinating? Do you have any specific, do you have a specific revision method or a way of studying? I avoid procrastinating by, I don't know, I'm just really motivated. I'm really, I have a passion for what I'm studying. I really enjoy it and I feel like I always need to be working. If I'm not working on my schoolwork, I'm doing something productive, even if it's just like drawing like I have here on the wall or, you know, sending an email or just writing, anything that is, I want to be working all the time. I have like this need to sit down and work. Don't get me wrong. I like to sit down and chill and whatever, but I have very specific times for chilling. For example, the morning with my coffee when I'm watching videos is great. I like to segregate very strongly my work time from my play time. So that when it's play time, I have lots and lots of fun. I don't do any work. I don't think about work. And then when it's work time, I'm very hyper focused on finishing what I have to do. Francesco Maranelli, one of the first people who started supporting me. Shout out to you if you're watching this video. How many lectures do you have per day on average and how many placements? So placements are starting now in second year. We have one day a week at a GP practice and one day a week in a hospital. And then lectures per day in first year, it was pretty intense. Sometimes we would have nine to five with just a break for lunch, but it's not all lectures. It's like lectures, tutorials, workshops, anatomy, dissections. So it kind of breaks up the day in that sense, but sometimes you would get periods where you just have four hours in the same lecture room. How many lectures do you have on day per average? It really varies. I'd say anywhere from two to like five or six. And yeah, it's quite a lot. First year was pretty intense. Why did you choose to study in the UK? There were a lot of factors that pushed me to apply to the UK. One was that I wasn't sure if I was going to get into Canadian medical schools. The application process is significantly harder there. The competitiveness is significantly higher there. So I knew that there was a lower chance of me actually getting accepted there. So I applied to the UK to have a backup, let's say. On top of that, all of my high school friends live in the UK. My sister lives in the UK. My parents are closer to me if I'm in the UK. So there were a lot of reasons for why I came to study in the UK, but ultimately I didn't get accepted in Canada. So I didn't really have a choice. I could have taken a gap year, but I just really wanted to start medicine. To which unis did you apply to and how many offers did you get? So I applied to Bristol, Southampton, Kings, and Queen Mary's. Queen Mary's rejected me without an interview. The other three I got interviews for. I rejected South Hampton's interview because I already was accepted to, I believe, Bristol at the time. And I went to both Bristol and Kings for my interviews and I got offers from both, but I eventually chose to come to Kings. What do you enjoy doing during your free time at uni? If I have any free time at uni, it's usually for like 45 minutes, maybe an hour. If I'm not eating during that time for lunch or because I'm hungry or whatever, I'll usually just be chatting to friends. We'll just sit down somewhere and have some conversation until our next class. Or I'll go to the library and try and finish up some work from earlier in that day so that I have less to do at the end of the school day and I can go home earlier. All right, this is a good question. So Azan M asks me, what's your favorite part of London? I definitely say that the coolest part of London is just how big it is and how much there is to do. There's so many high streets where you can go to your shopping. There's so many cafes and restaurants and just areas to explore. Every time I think I've like checked out all of Leicester Square or all of Hyde Park or whatever, there's always more and more and more that I haven't seen before. So I think it's just that there's so much to do, you'll never run out of entertainment here. He also asks, what's the best thing about medicine in your opinion? Azan, if you're referring to the KCL course, like what my opinion of medicine course is, I would definitely say the anatomy is the best thing. Having actual dissection has been so much fun in my first year. I've really, really enjoyed being the actual person to cut into the cadavers and explore all of the internal organs and different structures. So being able to actually do that yourself, it's a big deal for me. Now that I'm starting second year, I'm going to be going to GP placements and hospital placements, so I'm super, super excited about that and of course I'll let you guys know how that goes as time goes on. And the last question for this Q&A comes from me. If you guys have any specific video suggestions that you want me to make or any topics that you're unsure of that you want me maybe to elaborate on or give my own experience about, do let me know in a comment down below and I'll try and make a video on it in the future. If you like this Q&A, feel free to let me know. I'd be happy to do this again if you guys have any more questions in the future. Hope that gave you guys a little bit more insight into who I am, why I enjoy, and I hope to answer some of your questions that you had. Alright guys, thanks so much for watching. Leave a like on this video, subscribe to the channel if you enjoyed it and you want to see more videos from me. Signing out, I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace!