The Life of an Osteopathy Student
LIFE OF AN OSTEOPATHY STUDENT
As a third-year osteopathy student with 13 hours of contact time in lectures, and 6 hours of clinic each week, makes me feel like I need more days in my week. Many would disagree with me, however once you truly discover Swansea University it is much more than just a place to study.
If you ask me, I am glad I made the decision to study osteopathy. It is unique in every way, and the best thing about it is I can help people with the knowledge I have learnt. Did you know there are 600 muscles in the body?! And guess what, we must learn almost all of them. Through these years of studying I have come to realise that the human body is an amazing machine created that knows how to function in different ways and help us adapt to everything we do in life.
Now, a typical week in the life of an osteopathy student would seem long, but believe me when I say you do get enough time to do other extra-curricular activities, and the time spent in practical sessions is fun as you can get people to practice on you and that pretty much involves getting a massage (I mean, who doesn’t like one…). Oops my bad, I didn’t explain to you what the programme generally looks like; so we have theory lectures, practical sessions and clinic time.
The theory lectures, you learn about the anatomy of the body, and how one could present with many things, while the practical teaches you the different things you need to carry out in order to treat a patient, and with clinic, you observe the third and fourth years in the first two years, and then you move on to summer clinic in the third year and start taking your own patients. Also! Did I mention, you get to see dissection of a human body, this is just there to help you understand the anatomy of the body… PS: don’t worry it isn’t compulsory, if you are grossed out by it, you can skip it… but it is very interesting!
Studying this course comes with many benefits, firstly you get free treatment in the university clinic from your fellow osteopaths helped by the tutors. You also get to join the osteopathy society and through this you get various talks from guest lecturers, you get to be a part of a sports day called ESO, where different osteopathy colleges take part, you practically just get drunk and compete in sports against the other colleges! And take my word it is a lot more fun than what I described!
Personally, I have made so many friends on my course, we are a small group of about 40 students and that means a great amount of personalised contact with tutors, everyone knows each other, you go to parties together, you get a pint after long clinic days together and simply just a lot of fun. Don’t worry, we don’t become nerds and make bone jokes all the time. In fact, many of us are part of various sport societies and cultural or arts societies. It is a demanding course and you have to be at the top of your game all the time, but that doesn’t mean you cannot go to wind street every week, just don’t turn up hungover to clinic and you will be fine!
