Learner Profile
Sophie Eppinger

School

Goethe University, Germany

HMX Courses

Physiology, Immunology, Biochemistry, Genetics

Sophie Eppinger has known for a long time that she’s wanted to study medicine, thanks largely to internships she’d pursued in Germany and in the United Kingdom after high school. She took HMX courses prior to her first year at Goethe University in Germany, where she’ll be working toward a career in emergency surgery. “With surgery, you can help right on the spot,” she says. “You can help in the second that you see the problem.” Here, she shares how HMX courses got her closer to that goal.

HMX offered the very best combination of the subjects I was really interested in and the subjects I felt I was not really well prepared for. I hadn’t had the subjects in high school, like genetics or immunology. And I thought this would be an amazing preparation for medical study.

The courses began really slowly and everything was repeated quite often, which made it so easy for me. I never had the feeling like I would lose connection to what the professors had said. I never felt alone but like someone would be there explaining it again and again so that I would really, definitely have understood it. When I had a question, I felt like the video or the text would answer those questions. No matter how complicated my question was, I could rely on my questions to be answered.

Yes…I was amazed how quickly I received a response, and it was also so friendly. Most of the time I asked a question, they referred to something in the video. They helped me to connect the information I already had. It was not like they gave me more information, but I maybe misunderstood something and they brought everything into the right order again. So that was really helpful.

I especially liked the clinical examples – there were examples which were very, very common, like trisomy 21, and others that were really, really rare, which you would probably never see again in your life unless you specialized for this as a doctor. That was such a cool mix. Like, I can gain first experiences and see something for the first time and on the other hand I can see patients with a diagnosis that I will probably never see again.

[Before taking HMX courses], I’d bought books for my studies that are beginning right now – I tried to read through them but I didn’t really understand anything. After the HMX lessons, I understood almost everything and it was so easy. I now have a really good overview of some basic topics, and that makes me feel very, very confident for my studies that I’m beginning now.

I’ve brought my notes to my new apartment and I’ll definitely refer to them again. We just had a lesson for revision for chemistry, and I came home and the first thing I was looking into my biochemistry notes and revising what I’ve learned. That was very helpful.