Two weeks cannot settle a career decision. Used properly, they can change the question. Gizem went to Cambridge to find out whether she wanted to study medicine, and came back without a definitive answer. This is her account of it, in her own words.
She was sixteen, in the year before her final school exams. The people around her were enthusiastic about the idea of medicine and she could not tell how much of that enthusiasm had become her own. She attended Immerse Education's Medicine programme in Cambridge from 19 July to 1 August 2026, taught at one college with accommodation at another a short walk away.
I asked her to write down what actually happened, before the details faded. What follows is edited only lightly, for length.
Before
How did the idea of going to Cambridge come up? Who did you hear it from, and why this programme?
I did not have a specific plan to go to Cambridge. Videos and adverts for summer programmes in England kept appearing on social media. I had wanted to go abroad for a long time, and the idea of making friends and studying at the same time appealed to me. When I told my family, my father asked around for someone who knew about these processes, and that is how we met Burcu.
The reason I chose this particular programme was that I was thinking about medicine. I joined a career programme to understand whether being a doctor would actually make me happy, or whether it suited me at all.
How were you feeling before you went? Excited, nervous, both?
Honestly, until about a week before, I was not excited at all. As the date got closer I was both stressed and excited.
What surprised you most? Was there an expectation that did not match the reality?
They send you a lot of emails beforehand, including a day-by-day plan with times. I assumed the programme would follow that exactly, but what we were sent and what was actually delivered were different. So on some days I was preparing for lessons purely on guesswork.
What did your family think? What were their first reactions, their worries, their support?
My mother had no objection at all and supported me. My father did not disagree about the programme itself, but deep down he did not want to send me alone to a completely different country for two weeks. In the end he did not put any obstacles in my way, and the two weeks passed.
During
What did you feel when you first arrived in Cambridge? The journey from the airport, the first night, the first morning.
Nothing felt real until I got off the plane. When I met the mentor who came to collect me I was so nervous I got confused about which way to go and could not even understand what he was saying to me. Then he introduced me to the others and I met a girl from Mongolia. Both the Cambridge group and the Oxford group waited at the airport together for the shuttle. We waited so long, about three or four hours, that my excitement had faded a bit by the end.
There were four of us going to Cambridge. By the time we arrived all the activities were over and everyone was in the common room watching the World Cup final. I went to my room once the check-in was done. That evening two girls knocked on my door. They were Turkish, and we introduced ourselves. They had said they would come and meet me in the morning, but I got lost at the college and missed them, so I had to walk there alone using Google Maps.
What did a day look like? What time did you get up, what were the classes like, what did you do in your free time?
I usually got up at 7:40, met my friends and we walked to the college together. There was a café on the way we always stopped at for coffee before going to the college breakfast. I did not really like the breakfast, to be honest. Next to our own breakfast culture it was not satisfying.
They took attendance three times a day in the courtyard, and after that everyone went to their classes. Students on the academic programme finished earlier than us. At lunchtime and in free periods after class we could go out as we liked, as long as we wrote our names in the office. So I walked around the streets with my friends and tried restaurants. Every evening after lessons we did various activities with our mentors: competitions, games, sport.
Is there a moment you will not forget? A class, a trip, a conversation, a friend.
One day I went wearing a Galatasaray shirt. That day a lot of people started conversations with me just by saying "oh, Galatasaray". I did not expect it to be that recognisable. I even ended up in a Fenerbahçe versus Galatasaray argument with a Bulgarian boy.
What did you learn about medicine that affected you most?
A lecturer who does research at Cambridge came to our class and told us about music therapy. People who could not use their limbs were recovering through music. She even showed us videos of her own patients. That really surprised me. Medicine is not only operations and medication.
The one I enjoyed most was the forensics session. We took it together with the students from the law programme, split into three groups and competed to solve a case. We did DNA tests, blood typing, that kind of thing, and answered quiz questions as well. Injecting those tubes under time pressure was great fun, and being the one the team trusted most with it made me quite proud. We came second.
Which countries were your friends from? Are you still in touch with them?
I made friends from Spain, the Netherlands, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, France and Morocco. But the group I was closest to was a French girl, a Polish girl and the two Turkish girls I had met, and we still message each other now and then.
Was there anything you found difficult? The food, the language, homesickness, the academic load?
Communication, I think. And it is not only about your level of English. I am not someone who mixes easily with everyone even in Turkey, and when speaking English is added on top of that, it was difficult for me. The person opposite would be listening to me with real interest and I would get flustered and not be able to speak. That is why I was quite emotional for the first two days. But somehow you get past it with time.
Cambridge
What was Cambridge like as a city? Was it what you expected?
Cambridge is a very calm and beautiful city. Before I came I was expecting somewhere more crowded and rushed, but on the contrary everyone was relaxed and doing their own thing. Most people there were like us anyway, coming from different countries for summer programmes.
Did you get to explore outside the programme? Punting, the colleges, museums, London?
On the first day they gave us a tour of the city and we walked around. At the weekend we went punting. Since they let us move around freely within Cambridge anyway, we explored on our own. We went to London and saw Big Ben, the London Eye, Covent Garden.
What struck you most about British culture? And the biggest difference compared with Türkiye?
How punctual and rule-following they are made an impression on me.
The biggest difference was the food, I think. I do not believe they have a very varied cuisine, and I really missed our own food while I was there.
After
How did this experience change you? Is studying medicine still the plan, or have new ideas come up?
Thanks to this programme I know much more about medicine and I learned how broad it is. Honestly, yes, I want to be a doctor, but I am still not certain. Time will tell.
Before the programme I was thinking a lot about whether I really wanted medicine or whether it was just the people around me getting me excited about it, whether I would be happy if I became a doctor, whether it was worth studying for all those years. Overall the programme showed me that being a doctor really is a good thing.
What pointed me towards a specific area was our visit to the Royal College of Surgeons: what the surgeons we met there told us, and the virtual museum.
What is your next step? What are you thinking of doing, and have your plans for the future shifted?
From now on I am planning to study more consistently and develop myself further. I want to not stay limited to school, but take part in programmes and study in other places too.
What would you say to someone considering a programme like this?
If you are thinking about it but secretly undecided, push that thought down and go. You will not be this age again and a chance like this may not come to your feet, so do not hesitate. Do not be afraid of being alone or not making friends either. The people going there think the same way you do and you always end up close to someone.
It feels strange even to say it as a warning, but know the course you are applying to. Research whether you are choosing Academic Insight or Career Insight and apply accordingly.
What is the biggest difference between the Gizem before she went and the Gizem now?
Before I went, I used to feel self-conscious about walking around, eating or having coffee on my own. It felt as though I could not spend time by myself. But when I got there I learned to spend time with myself as well, and my confidence increased. I learned to solve my problems on my own.
My shyness and awkwardness on the first day had clearly gone by the final days. I had started to express my ideas more fearlessly, and I was able to put myself forward in the practical sessions too.
A note on this case. Gizem returned still uncertain, and that is the outcome I would expect from a well-chosen two weeks. A summer programme cannot resolve a decision that properly takes years. What it can do is improve the quality of the uncertainty: she now understands the size of the field she was considering, and has a specific area drawing her attention that did not exist for her three weeks earlier.
Two things in her account are worth repeating to anyone considering this. Know exactly which stream you have applied to, because providers run academic-content and career-exploration programmes under closely similar names, and the wrong one gives you two weeks of competent teaching that does not answer your question. And treat the published timetable as a plan rather than a contract.
One more thing, which she raised last and almost in passing. The hardest part was not academic and not language. It was being listened to attentively, in a second language, by people she had just met. For any student travelling alone for the first time, the first forty-eight hours are usually the worst of it, and almost everyone in the room is experiencing some version of the same thing.
Most summer programme enquiries I receive begin with the destination: Oxford, Cambridge, a city, a name. The ones that produce something useful begin with what the student is actually trying to find out.