Looking Back at the GA

Hi everyone,

This is my last blog entry pertaining to the 2015 IFMSA August Meeting (AM). Unlike many of the others, I can’t say I was hit by post-General Assembly (GA) blues, most likely because immediately after the AM I continued to travel Europe for another three weeks with two of my best friends, visiting the French Riviera, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. I just didn’t really have time to focus on not being at the GA anymore.

That being said, I can definitely say that of all the things I’ve done in Europe during my 10 week-trip, the GA was one of my favourites. Yes, it was a lot of work, and yes, I got very little sleep throughout the whole thing. But honestly, it was all worth it. All the different people you meet, all the different ways you see IFMSA changing the world, all these medical students putting so much work into something that isn’t immediately relevant to their studies just leaves you speechless. It was truly one of the most incredible things I have experienced in my life.

Overall, I think I accomplished what I wanted to at the GA. I signed 55 bilateral exchange contracts and 27 unilateral ones, so we will be sending out the most students we ever have through IFMSA next year. I also got to know numerous other NEOs whom I’ll be working with this upcoming year. I managed to foster new relationships between IFMSA-Québec and other National Member Organizations (NMOs) by signing with NMOs we had never signed with before, and managed to maintain contracts with most of the NMOs we had signed with previously. We even re-opened ties with Switzerland, an NMO with which we hadn’t had exchanges the previous year. So, all in all, I think the GA was a success when it comes to exchanges. Of all the pre-GA objectives I had set for myself, the only one I kind of neglected was the one about learning something about the migration of healthcare workers, which was the theme of the GA. Despite not being able to attend the theme events because of exchange-related duties, I still learned a lot about the migration of healthcare workers during the regional sessions.

So, in short, I’m very happy to say I loved the GA and, despite the hectic schedule, I managed to do everything I had set out to do.

Best regards, this time from beautiful Montreal,

Mike