Hi!

My name is Annika Piek and I’m a 21 year old who is currently studying Medicine at the Radboud University. I was born and raised in Rotterdam, and still enjoy visiting my hometown whenever I get the time to. Under normal circumstances I’m just like any student, who likes to party, go out to dinner, spend time with family and friends and whose second name is procrastination.

During 2018-2019 I studied BMG at the Erasmus University just like you are doing/ will be doing. The decision to start BMG was initiated because I didn’t get through the selection process of Leiden University. I had overlooked this study program and found it at the last moment, and felt that it was a great second choice. The “BMG Journey” started with the Eurekaweek which contributed highly to my experience at ESHPM. During the year I attended a lot of SHARE activities (recommendation!) and attended many classes with a great deal of fun. I learned a lot about SPSS, the dutch health care system and the meaning of illnesses.

I learned a lot, but felt that I missed working with patients. I realized that I eventually wanted to be on the frontline of healthcare and not work behind the scenes. Regardless, I had the best time during the first year of BMG.  I learned a lot about “the studentlife”. Met a lot of amazing people, who I still see and talk to on a regular basis. Therefore, I do not regret studying BMG for a year at all.

The decision to apply for Medicine at the Radboud Universiteit was based on the selection procedure and curriculum. The RU promotes with the fact that they want to educate “social” doctors, who take pride in their communication-skills. Something which really helped me prepare for the admissions test were the experiences of other people. You can find a lot of them online, with websites providing practice tests. The test day was approximately a month after the christmas holiday. This is the period in which a lot of students have re-sits or exams. It wasn’t always easy to combine studying for both BMG and Medicine, but if you put in two weeks of hard work, you’ll be fine. Now that I am currently studying medicine I am still really happy with the way that I got here. A lot of the SPSS en AVV subjects are being tought during this first year. The fact that BMG already provided me with that knowledge helps a great deal. Furthermore, having the knowledge on our healthcare system, helps me understand the Medical world.

Something which I would recommend, if you’re contemplating switching to something else’s is looking at your own qualities. Forget about everyone elses opinion on what you can and can’t do. Look at what you want looking forward 10/20 years from now. What makes you happy? And if you still don’t know, just apply and you’ll have more time to think about it. Just take a leap of faith.

Goodluck!

Annika Piek

Dear SHARE-members,

You probably know me already, but for those of you who don’t: My name is Geert van Gils, currently 22 years old, in my second year of the Bachelor program of ESHPM and I am the Treasurer and Vice President of the 37th Board of F.A. SHARE.  Before I discovered the world of SHARE and ESHPM, I was a student at the Erasmus Medical Centre where I studied Medicine. I was proud that I was accepted and started with good spirits. Unfortunately, I found out that this study did not make me happy and as the year progressed I felt less motivated and I knew that this was not the program that suits me. In my eyes, it was too much ‘know your book at the end of the period, reproduce the exact information and after that you can forget it’ and too little ‘create your own way of thinking, apply the information we provide and see what you can do with the provided information’. Even though the perspective of being a doctor is fantastic, the road towards this wasn’t made for me and would not make me happy…so I made a hard decision and decided to stop studying with Medicine.

Then, I started to think again about what I would really like to do and where my interests lie. I still loved the healthcare sector and I found myself wanting to have the knowledge to talk about what is going on in this sector. Besides that, I have always been interested in how organizations work, how you can be part of this and how the healthcare sector is managed. When I came across the Bachelor program of ESHPM, I immediately knew that this was where I belonged and after the Bachelor Open Day and a ‘student for a day’-event I decided to sign up for this program. Since then, I have had no regrets at all and every day I am still happy with the choice I made to be a part of ESHPM and SHARE (of course)!