MRIC Global Essay Contest: My experience in a Hungarian hospital as a foreign medical student

Author: Lilipar Alim

Medical student at Faculty of Medicine, University of Pecs

I am a third-year medical student studying at a Hungarian medical school called the University of Pecs. I come from northwest China, and I am of Uyghur ethnicity. When I was younger, I loved learning new languages and science, as I have always been very passionate about helping people.

My name, Lilipar, is a very ancient and mysterious name that means a magical herb that can heal any diseases, so I feel that I am destined to be in medicine. When I entered middle school, I also found out that I was attracted to natural science subjects, such as biology, chemistry, and physics. By the time I was in high school, I was fascinated by the beauty of the human body and the harmony of how all of the cells work separately and as a whole. That's when I finally decided that I would choose a career in medicine and become a doctor. I left China in 2014 to follow my dream, and I completed one year of pre-med in Hungary. Before I left China, I had already been accepted to the University in China for Medicine, but I wanted to challenge myself more, so I decided to go abroad. However, at that time, I could only speak English as a foreign language, and I didn't have many options. Medical schools in the United States and the United Kingdom were too expensive and required undergraduate degrees to enter.