During the 4th semester, I attended 3 courses at Leiden University and one remotely at Karolinska Institutet.
Physiology Basic Concepts
This course was the primary reason why I got the impression of studying medicine instead of biomedical sciences. Our lecturers were mainly doctors, bringing up stories from their profession and encouraging us to think as if we really had a patient in front of us.The course was divided into two parts and there was an exam after each part, accounting for half of the final grade.
Unfortunately, most of this course was held online as the Netherlands was still struggling with a high number of Covid-19 cases. These circumstances were a bit of a burden in adapting to the new system as Leiden University has its own online platform, called Kaltura. The exam consisted of multiple choice questions which required the use of the acquired knowledge in practice. Nonetheless, I think its level was adequate for the level of teaching (in other words: it was very difficult but not surprising).
Pathology
I had a high expectations for this course already before I arrived in Leiden as I knew about its very specific, practical component.
The course was again divided into a few parts, each dedicated to one theme. Within one theme there were lectures, workgroups, and a lot of self-study. We would start by discussing the topic at a default condition and then move to the pathology.
One of the themes was about anatomy and here comes already mentioned practical. We had a week of dissections with cadavers in a dissection hall. Our work was divided into exploring different parts of the body each day and I cannot stress enough how much of an insight into the human body and understanding of the whole system it gave me. I am very grateful that I had a chance to take part in such practical, especially since Leiden University is the only medical center in the Netherlands (not sure about other countries) where biomedical students are engaged in such activities, not medical students exclusively.
Unfortunately, I have to point out that the organization of the course has a lot of room for improvement. There were both general problems with the organization of the classes, workgroups held online and unfavouring schedule of the course as well as more personally experienced difficulties related to being an exchange student. The anatomy practical was mainly targeted toward Dutch-speaking students and all the materials were in Dutch, with only a few pages being translated into English. This kind of problem, probably arising from miscommunication, put extra work on our hands and made the course very stressful, nevertheless still enjoyable.
Hormones and Nervous System
If I was about to say what was my favourite course, I would definitely go for this one, without any hesitation. This course was partially the reason why I decided to go for an exchange, as it is not offered by KI and as a big Neuroscience passionate, I thought it will be beneficial as well as fun to attend it. I must say I was not disappointed at all.
The course had new to me and definitely a challenging structure. Each day a new topic would be introduced with a brief lecture and later in the day, there would be a lot of self-studying to read dedicated literature and make notes. On the next day, we would have a response lecture to address our questions, some time for expanding the topic by extra lecture (usually not included in the examination material). To conclude we would have a test of 3 open questions when our knowledge of understanding the topic would be tested. We were allowed to use books, notes, and even the Internet to provide the answer. Altogether, we had around 20 tests and they accounted for 25% of the final grade. They were not obligatory but I would strongly suggest not to take advantage of the free choice and skip them all.
In addition to this highly demanding schedule, we would have a literature assignment to write in pairs during the course. Based on the article, we would produce an essay where we discuss the study, think about its strong and weak sides, and design a follow-up experiment. I was lucky with the topic I was chosen for as the supervisor was also the first author of the article and we had a very inspiring and motivating discussion with him.
When it comes to the exam, it was rather a difficult one, not to say that the most difficult I have ever been challenged with. It was an open book exam, yet the combination of 18 open, detailed questions, lots of literature, and only 3 hours resulted in a rather unpleasant experience of rush, panic, and an adrenaline boost. The highlight was the fact that not a single person left before the end of the time, while usually, only a few students would stay till the very end. Nevertheless, I highly enjoyed this course and I would go for it again.
The Life Science Industry
Even though initially this course was supposed to be dealt with on our own, with very short notice we got the information that we will be enrolled in a light, online version of it with help of the course director herself. We did it instead of the Physiology Advanced Concepts which was a short course right after Physiology Basic Concepts.
The light version of it meant that there are some adjustments due to short time and distance teaching. We had a couple of great workshops and both group and individual assignments which accounted for the final grade. Even though the course was a lot of work including self-study of the material that otherwise would be included in the lectures, I enjoyed taking part in it and becoming familiar with a different aspect of science. I think it was a very thoughtful and beneficial decision of the KI to provide such an opportunity to the three of us, Karolinska exchange students.
Communication in Science (CIS)
CIS is an additional subject that goes in parallel with other subjects throughout all 3 years of the BSc degree in Biomedical Sciences at Leiden University. As only one-semester students, we took part in a few activities which were: a critical essay, symposium, and presentation. In my opinion CIS was a very valuable component, putting stress on different aspects than a hard-core science subject. By engaging in it, I got a lot of personal, insightful, and valuable feedback regarding both my writing and presenting skills. I had an opportunity to listen to other people presenting their work which made me both inspired and aware of different presentation styles and techniques. I am happy I had a chance to get involved in CIS, even on this small scale.
Extra activities
Some of the courses gave us an opportunity to take part in extra activities. During Pathology we went to the anatomy museum at LUMC and looked at even more anatomy (including anatomical pathologies) as an illustration of what we have been studying. During the last course, we got an opportunity to visit the Johnson&Johnson company campus, located in Belgium. During a one-day excursion, we got to know the history, beginnings, and main goals of the corporation and later on we walked through different labs to see what exactly people are working on and with. It was an amazing experience to see the real application of the knowledge we gained in the course before.