Another day, another dollar (I hope – haven’t had a contract yet).
We are at the half way point of this year’s SSCs: the first module finishes tomorrow and the second begins next week, after yet another Bank Holiday. Several students have vowed to return to the life classes, even though they are moving on to different things on Tuesday. However, their loyalties must be to the next teaching block (anaesthetics, audiology, General Practice etc.), so it’s debatable whether they will have time to travel, on public transport, to the Medical School after finishing at locations in other parts of the Potteries.
The life class produced yet more strong drawings, firstly from the model on the move, and then from a long pose. The movement drawings were particularly impressive. Feedback has been positive (to my face, at least!) with comments about the value of the classes in learning to look and see; the luxury of being able to spend 2 hours doing something quite different from medical study; and the benefits of experiencing a different kind of concentration and effort. Medical Humanities continue to be regarded as a soft option in some quarters (academic as well as student), but the work put into these drawings surely contradicts that. It ain’t easy…
An audit of last year’s students has demonstrated that they were “normally distributed” within the ranks of academic achievement, and at least one has had work published as a result of taking the Medical Humanities option. (I’ve forgotten whether the term “rank” is appropriate here – I do dimly remember having to rank results for statistical analysis, but it might have been for something different. Anyway, I’m not trying to imply that they’re smelly or rotten in any sense.)
So on to the next phase, and new students to guide through the minefields of wordprocessing and charcoal manipulation.
(And a Happy 90somethingth Birthday to my father, who qualified in Medicine in 1942, and whose copy of Gray’s Anatomy – now covered in trendy 1970s wrapping paper – has been worn to rags with 70 years of use)
