what I learned from my first week of studying

When national isolation began in the UK, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the MCAT exam. The MCAT is probably one of the most intense and gruelling standardised exams out there which thousands of aspiring ‘pre-med’ students take every year. The total seated exam time is 7.5 hours. There are four key sections which have over 50 questions each.

Doesn’t it sound like fun? In the morbid way that running marathons is fun. People from all walks and stages of life run marathons every year. The government doesn’t want me running for much more than 30 minutes a day, so with marathons off the table - MCAT training it is.

So where do you even start studying for this ginormous exam?

I have not taken many biology courses in my academic career, and certainly not taken any in the past five years. I’m a materials-turned industrial engineer working in digital innovation for the aerospace industry. The last time I took an exam was in May 2016.

Initially, I predicted that this would be a gruelling process and that I’d probably park it after realising I have a full-time job. It’s actually been quite the contrary. I have loved studying biochemistry and human biology way more than I ever thought I would.

1. Big topic? Just pick something and start looking at the first thing that interests you.

Everything in the MCAT is interconnected, so don’t worry about missing anything. You’ll likely see it come up at least twice across different chapters and sections. You want to know how enzymes work? Well, you should understand what proteins are, basic thermodynamics, and it wouldn’t hurt to know about cellular membranes.

But it doesn’t matter whether you knew that before going into the chapter or not - if you at least have some basic science education still lurking in your memory then you’ll be able to make sense of what’s going on. Then this is where the fun starts - the endless cycle of Google searches and Khan Academy videos about all those terms you don’t quite understand.

2. The human body is an unbelievably synchronised orchestration of recycling centres, engines and warehouses.

If machines could process plastics, oils and metals like human body processing fat, carbohydrates, and proteins then we might live in a greener world. The human body is the ultimate electro-chemi-mechanical machine - and trust me, I’ve worked on jet engines.

Kaplan’s MCAT Biology and Biochemistry are currently available on Scribd, which offer a 30-day unlimited free trial. I don’t recommend using a textbook as a sole source of study review, and you’d probably get bored if you used this as your only source of information.

3. ATP is the MVP of life.

For me, this has been the biggest takeaway from learning about biochemistry. I realised early on that ATP seemed to be coming up in loads of examples and processes. The first chapter title with ATP in it was still many chapters away but I felt like I was missing out on a lot of context not knowing what it was.

ATP is Adenosine Triphosphate. Three negatively charged phosphate groups bonded together in an unstable, high energy state attached to adenosine (an important chemical that makes up RNA and slows down neural activity - so we can feel sleepy at the end of a long day). When ATP is hydrolysed and loses a phosphate group, it releases energy. Throughout evolution, ATP has become the molecule that is just about stable enough to control when it will react and produces the right amount of energy to enable other chemical transactions.