Fresh Start: Miroslawa Gorecka'scollege diary

I touched down in Ireland once again, four days ago, ready to return to NUI Galway and first-year medicine. My Christmas in Poland was wonderful - friends and family were happy to see me and I felt welcome.

The idea of home changes when you move to another country. While you miss everything you have left behind, when you return things are not quite the same. You have left your "home" - home is a different idea now. The effect of emigration on Polish people will be felt for many years.

The number of divorces in Poland is going up. Psychologists are blaming the increase on huge numbers of emigrations by Polish people looking for better jobs. Imagine, half a million married couples in Poland are living in separate countries, with many partners now in Ireland or England. That's tough on a marriage.

Of course, they could always commute. I had a vision of my future the other day as I read about the working life of Piotr Robinski, a Polish doctor who commutes to the UK from Poland once a fortnight to work as a GP in Aberdeen. He drives four hours from Poznan to Wroclaw airport, spends two hours on a budget flight to Glasgow, drives four hours in a hired car to Aberdeen then starts his shift, visiting patients in their homes all over the city. Scottish doctors won't do it. Robinski has a full-time job as a GP in Poznan.

Apparently he's not the only Polish doctor commuting to the UK. Most Polish doctors have to work more than one job to make money, so I suppose it makes sense to take a second job in a town where the money's good.

Doctors in Poland only make about €400 per month. In the UK they can that much in a few hours. That's worth a 12-hour commute - at least he gets to go home to his wife.

Things may change for Polish doctors by the time I qualify, however. While I've been studying in Ireland they've been striking in Warsaw and elsewhere, so pay might get better. Also, the new Polish minister for health has big plans for the health service, including turning all hospitals into commercial companies. Who knows what sort of system I'll be working in?

But I have to qualify first. My Christmas exam results were mixed. I think I did okay on the papers, but I did quite badly in my team projects. I'm not a team player, it seems. I prefer to work alone. When you work in a team, there's a lot of talk and most of it is off the point. Anyway, I've been told by my lecturer that I'll never be a good doctor if I don't learn to work in team. So I think I'll work with corpses.

I'll specialise in forensic medicine. Maybe if I work with dead bodies then my people skills won't be so important.

This term we're starting work on cadavers. I don't know how I will react to seeing my first corpse. I've seen and handled many animal corpses through working at the veterinary clinic, but I think seeing a human corpse will be different.

In Poland, medical lecturers are cruel in the way that they introduce young students to dead bodies. They mock you if you show weakness. I've heard stories of lecturers eating their lunch over a corpse just to make the students feel queasy. I like that approach. It gives me a challenge to rise to.

Another good thing about corpses is that they don't talk. Language is becoming a bit of a problem for me. At school, the teachers were always careful to make sure that I was keeping up, that my English was strong enough to stay on top of each subject. At university, there's no such help. While my writing and reading is fine, I find it hard to keep up at lectures. I have no one to blame - I chose to do my studies through English. However, sometimes I feel I'd be better off studying in the library than going to lectures I can't understand.

It's like driving on the left side of the road. I can do it, but it doesn't feel safe. I have my driving test in three weeks. I've crashed my car twice since returning from Poland. The tester might fail me on the state of my car.

My car is very important to me because I travel around Ireland a lot. I've been to Donegal, Drogheda, Dublin, and all around Galway and I plan to do more exploring this year. I know the Irish roads better than the Polish roads by now. This will all come in very handy when I'm commuting from Warsaw to Letterkenny.