Overall I really enjoyed this course, however keeping up with the workload was quite difficult and I often felt that I was having to work much harder than people taking other part II options. I chose PDN because I really enjoyed part 1 physiology, however I found that Part I and Part II were completely different from each other and previous Part I physiology knowledge was not necessary. If doing this course again I would probably ensure that I made organised notes after each lecture by using relevant reviews, papers, lecture slides etc, so that I would have something to revise from closer to exams. For most topics I found that reading a few reviews and maybe a couple of papers from key researchers was most useful. At first I read a lot of primary papers, however when it came to exams I found that there were too many little details (like names and dates) to possibly remember, so towards the end of the year I read less primary papers and more reviews instead. I also found writing essays very helpful, and should have found the time to write more than I did as some of the feedback I received from marked essays was very useful for the exams. When starting to revise I would recommend looking at past paper questions very early on: I noticed that some lecturers always asked questions that could easily be answered just by using the material in their lecture slides, while other lecturers asked more difficult questions which required lots of extra reading in order to answer them (and sometimes didn’t relate to the lecture itself at all). In this way I was able to identify the topics which required wider reading / reading in more depth.