I've been thinking for a long time of writing an unofficial guide to being a first year mixed moder. Things like books and equipment to buy; what to expect from the course; etc. If you'd find it useful then here's a brief list:

1. Buy the "Thieme Atlas of Anatomy" (get the right one, not the head/neck/organs ones) and Gray's Anatomy student version. Tortora is okay for basics (Actually Tortora is very good for homeostasis, and for embryology). Kingston "Understanding Muscles" and "Understanding Joints" are good for complementing Thieme, Gray's, and Stone (see next point).

2. Learn all your muscle attachments from Stone and Stone, and ignore everything else! (This needs an explanation: muscle attachments vary from source to source. This is very confusing, and makes learning them trickier than it needs to be. It's simpler to pick one source and stick to it, but be aware other sources will vary. There's also natural anatomical variation to consider. All that said, Stone and Stone is the Bible, and nobody will question you if you say "According to Stone...").

3. Buy a skeleton from eBay for £80. They pop up there all the time from a weird company in Germany.

4. Set up a wiki! (And get at least 3 people to edit it! Don't leave it up to one person or it will go out of date).

5. Use wikipedia to look up any question in the LRPs that you can't immediately find in the text books, then use books to get the extra detail. (The faculty will have a fit if you admit to doing this, but it's the only realistic way to do it all without wasting hours looking things up).

6. Secret tip: Manus Sinistra is the BSO organisation that puts on talks with guest speakers. Most of these talks are recorded and made available in the library, and through "media on demand" on the intranet.

7. Buy the anatomy flashcards based on Netter's anatomy atlas. (The Gray's flashcards look nicer but don't have all the details).

8. Write your LRP answers directly onto flashcards, and carry them around with you everywhere.

9. If you have a laptop, bring it in and get the IT guys to allow it onto the BSO network.

10. Another secret tip: You can get free osteopathic treatment from Jonathan Eddis, but he only works Tuesday mornings, and is booked up at least 2 weeks in advance! Any other day you'll get a 4th year student treating you.

11. Final secret tip: A book called "Aids to Examination of the Peripheral Nervous System" contains lots of active resistance muscle tests, which you're expected to know for the OSPEs but are rarely actually taught.

12. Apparently we can ask Will Podmore for a SCONUL library card. This allows you access to lots of libraries throughout the UK.

13. How the years are organised - it might be painfully obvious, but took some of us in MM2006 a while to understand. Since the Mixed Mode and Standard Pathway timetables are not quite in sync, and the Mixed Mode academic year is longer than the usual academic year, the term "year 1" or "year 2" etc mean different things, depending on who's saying them to you. Tutors often get confused by this, not just the students. So there are different ways of referring to each MM year-group. (Standard Pathway is all straightforward). The first MM academic year is called "orientation phase", or "Year 1". The beginning of the "second year" is called "year 2.1" or "year 2 level 1". I believe it's also called the "consolidation phase". Anyway, at this point, you're in your second Mixed Mode year, but still doing work that would be in the first year of the Standard Pathway. After this phase comes 2.2, which is also known as "MM Yr3", "level 5", and the "development and integration phase". Yes, that year has 4 different names.