Slightly less frenetic this week, as I am learning to pace myself and consequently not as “high” as I was after the teaching last time. I have always found teaching an exhausting business; more of a performance than a simple academic exercise. Medics learn from a very early age to cope with speaking in public – sometimes in front of huge audiences in seemingly vast lecture theatres (sometimes in foreign parts, with your own image projected behind you as if at a political rally). Not everyone enjoys it, but somehow we get through it: my coping strategy involves assuming a (probably highly annoying) super-confident extrovert persona, leaping about as if I had St. Vitus’ Dance and trying to make people laugh. Sad, really. And very tiring. But they do call it a Lecture Theatre, after all.
The life classes are proceeding in a satisfactory manner, and the drawings are getting better and better. There’s still a bit of reluctance to move away from the black line all around the form, but everyone is doing much more looking, and they are looking more critically and productively.
My student, Y.L., has decided to investigate the topic of explaining a common cancer to the “target group” using a graphic format. Cue much discussion of the role of images vs. text, whether the provision of information can reduce anxiety, and how best to do this. Yet again, most of the available Patient Information Booklets give precedence to text over explanatory images. memo to self: must find out more about literacy rates & geographical variation thereof.
Arriving back home, I have remembered to vote – telling myself as ever that people died so that I could vote, and it’s an insult to them if I don’t do it. Not that anybody I ever voted for actually got elected….. Now the mist has descended on the hill, and visibility is down to about 100 yards. A metaphor for modern politics?
