YEAR 2
I have been asked to do the Art & Anatomy SSCs for a second year, which is very pleasing. This year we’re planning to do two four-week blocks rather than 3, avoiding the clashes with exams which got in the way last year.
Must get organised….. the trouble with being terminally untidy is that everything is lost under piles of paper. I had no idea that being a full-time artist would generate so much Stuff. At least I know where the SSC Stuff is, having rescued my briefcase last year from it’s 20year sojourn in the loft
As it turns out, we haven’t quite finished. One of the students is keen to polish his essay for publication – probably in the Journal for Medical Humanities. If anyone knows whether there are any paintings by Jenny Saville in the West Midlands/NorthWest of England, I would be very grateful to hear about them as the student hasn’t actually managed to see any of her paintings in the flesh (as it were)
As far as I can tell, the project is over for the present. All the marking is finished, and I have even “second-marked” a couple of essays: one by a student who came to the life classes, and one by a complete stranger whose SSC was with the Music Department. Now I need to compose my feedback essay…
There’s an interesting looking event at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow on September 5th., but I’m not sure that I shall be able to get there. The event is called “Flex and Ply”, and the model on the poster has been painted with a dermatome map – a visual representation of the origins of the nerves supplying the different areas of skin (more or less) – which looks like a sort of stripey clown suit. My attempts to copy & paste it into this blog have failed completely. The information promises “wearable anatomies” as well as art work. Use your imagination.
There are now fewer than 24 hours to go before the final deadline for the student essays, and a fortnight to go before our deadline for assessments: so, the end of the first year of the project is in sight. No doubt much reflection & feedback will take place, and decisions will be made about including the Medical Humanities options in next year’s SSCs. From informal conversations last night at our end-of-module party, the students appear to have enjoyed themselves, and found the Humanities options useful as a whole. (Thanks to Lisetta for the excellent hospitality. Once again, I forgot to take my camera, so no photographs.)
An interesting piece of information from the A.M.H. conference in Truro: apparently, medical students who study Humanities as part of their course are more able to cope with “ambiguity” once they qualify as doctors. I wonder how you measure ambiguity? By definition, one would expect it to be a bit tricky to pin down – is a situation ambiguous, or isn’t it? Or is it? or perhaps not?
The last week begins: the last two students are preparing for their deadline, and I am preparing my invoice for expenses.
I’m looking forward to seeing the sketchbooks, as I think they’ve been doing quite a bit of drawing in the anatomy department this time. Curiously, although students have been filling their sketchbooks with lots of stuff, there hasn’t actually been a lot of Anatomy done so far. I suspect that, at one stage, the only person doing any of yer actual anatomical drawing was me.
