You can ring my bell ...

Today I ordered one of these. And one of these.
I think you will agree that both are superb.

Revision is not just for sixth formers

Sitting here tonight helping my beloved with his MRCP revision (when I say 'helping', what I mean is helping him mark his answers at the end of each section). MRCP is one of the post qualification exams that doctors have to take and pass in order to climb the slippery ladder of medicine (the very same exam which may be abolished in a few years' time because it doesn't really fit in with MMC don't you know), the exam which costs £300 per shot and has something like a 70% fail rate.

Did mock interviews yesterday at a grammar school in North East London - eight eager little would-be medics all lovely, keen and enthusiastic. I find it very hard not to disabuse them of their idealistic, happy ideas about what working in the NHS may mean for them. It's not even about the 'downsides of being a doctor' these days (awareness of which we are keen to assess in applicants) - it's all about the downsides of working in the NHS. The chances of a 17 year old knowing what this really means are nil - and why should they? And yet sitting here with the other half, watching him - after 9 years of training - go through an expensive, presently pointless hurdle for a career which currently promises him a future that is definite only in the following attributes: uncertainty of career structure, potential unemployment, years of geographical relocation, a dwindling amount of respect, successively eroded autonomy in treatment of patients, a possible conclusion as a 'junior consultant' still having to do week long night shifts - well - my heart is not really in it when I interview these poor oblivious applicants. They still think they can make a difference as a doctor. I'm increasingly unsure that they will be allowed to do so.

Christmas can't come soon enough

All this exotic travelling to the outer regions of London and Essex is tiring me out. In the last month I've been to 11 schools, which doesn't actually sound that much, but feels like quite a lot. Luckily, I get a big wodge of time off at christmas which means I get lots of time to work on my other little web based baby, as well as the requisite festivities.

If only Santa's little elves could bring back the 322,000 postings and 8000 members I had on my admissionsforum website before Claranet lost the data. That would be a great christmas present. Still, all is not lost - I might yet see the day that they return the £800 they took off me when I renewed my contract - the day before they lost all the data, almost four months ago.

Maybe they need the money more than I do.

Sunday muddy Sunday

Phenomenal rain here in Essex, and, I gather, other parts of the country. One of those days where the sun shines beautifully for ten minutes and then the sky goes black and roads are flooded within seconds. Out here in the countryside, it's all mud and flood. Or flood and mud, I suppose, is a more chronologically correct description.

I didn't mention my trip to a school in Chigwell on Friday, to do mock interviews (again). I had a mix of applicants for subjects as diverse as journalism, chemistry, history and business studies (why does anyone want to do business studies as a degree ... or journalism for that matter?)

This is a school based in the heart of the nouveau riche Essex/London suburbs - think builders made good, taxi drivers and small scale business people. It may well be where hair straighteners were invented - I'm sure I saw a Blue Plaque to that effect - and it certainly boasts a proliferation of nail bars. The car park is full of flash but youthful cars - belonging to the kids, not the teachers. (Incidentally our car is in the picture above; I'll leave you to guess which one it is).

Many of my interviewees don't really seem to know why they are applying to university. One tells me her friend has three conditional offers and yet she has none, and then says, very quietly, "Can I ask you a question? What is a conditional offer?" Bless her. Meanwhile my last applicant of the day, who has applied for journalism, doesn't read a newspaper (although this was a better answer than the one I expected - I thought she might tell me that she reads the Daily Mail). She doesn't know if she thinks the BBC is biased or not. She can't tell me any of the major stories in today's news. She hasn't done any work experience, although she has arranged some, with a huge media organisation, and is impressed that their portfolio includes Nutz. When I point out that she may need to do some journalistic research and perhaps even read a newspaper before her interview, she tells me she wants to be a fashion editor and it doesn't seem necessary. Which, I suppose, may be true.

Her last question is about what to wear to interview. I'm not sure it's appropriate for me to say "less fake tan" but I do try to point out that wearing such a short skirt may not be the best idea. On the other hand, for her work experience at least, it might be a ladder to the top.

It's the clucking weekend

Ah .. the weekend. Time to catch up with my favourite chicken shaped creatures - here they are "helping" with the gardening. They often help, pulling up flowers, scratching big muddy holes in the lawn and favourite of all, picking up twigs and leaves and rearranging them into pretend nests. We also had some fun "playing worms". This game involves me digging up the muddy ex-vegetable patch so that the chickens can grab the big fat worms nestling underneath, which they suck down like spaghetti (which they also love).
We've had two eggs almost every day for a year now, even though chickens are only supposed to lay 'from Easter to Guy Fawkes'. They are looking a bit worn out though. I feel guilty. They need a little egg free holiday.

Double O Heaven

What can I say. The best Bond movie ever.

Ah. Daniel.

Failure is not an option

Talking to Lower VI students is a bigger challenge than I thought. They really haven’t grasped the concept of applying to university yet. A lot of what I was saying to them today went straight over their heads. In this context, it was a real mistake to try to explain the admittedly strange concept of the University of London. As I watched their little eyes glaze over with a mixture of confusion and fear I felt a pang of sorrow at the way people now are pushed into making career choices so early on – and then have to achieve so much academically to get there. When they don’t, it all comes crashing down – and they aren’t well prepared for failure. It’s not their fault – teachers, careers advisors and above all, parents have inculcated them with the belief that ‘going to university’ is their sole objective.

While I often feel regret that I didn’t have guidance or choices when I was their age, it’s this kind of thing that makes me feel happy that I chose to study later in life, and what I did was entirely unrelated to career choices. I did it for the love of the subjects. Is Blair’s aim to get 50% of the population into university about this – or propping up the tax paying public – or just a good soundbite?

Living history

Sent an academic colleague out to one of the UK’s top schools last week to do a subject talk about computer science. He reported back to me the astonishing view of the teacher that his pupils worry that our university has “the Jack the Ripper factor, this being what the area is most famous for”. As someone with a Master’s in the History of London, I personally am thrilled that we are working in the midst of one of the seminal periods of Victorian London. I’ve always wanted to go back in time, but now it seems I don’t have to.

Better not tell them about the more contemporary issues – poverty, social deprivation, drug dealing and disease ....

The past from above

Wow. That sounds philosophical, doesn't it? It's not though - it's the name of an exhibition I went to see today at the British Museum with my dad. I recommend it. If you were studying geography or ancient history, this would be just the thing to give you an appetite for those subjects. Extraordinary and beautiful aerial shots of remnants of civilisations from the first century AD onwards. Pictures of beautiful Iraqi settlements and ancient towers - something we don't think about in the midst of a war and yet it was so powerful - home of Babylon - once the biggest city in the world. The picture to the left is the Minaret of the Great Mosque at Samarra, Iraq. It was built soon after AD847. These pictures show us how civilisations come and go, destroying each other and making way for new powers, who in turn get destroyed by others.

Have we not advanced since then?

Speech therapy wounds

(And I really mean that).

Met my friend from speech therapy over the weekend. Five months after leaving the course we are still licking our wounds. There’s a real sense of grievance, of injustice, over the way the university dealt with us. Granted, I wasn’t the most stellar student, but my friend – she’s bloody good. She already has a paper published from her first degree and aced most of her speech therapy courses while we were there. Neither of us felt there was any support from the tutors whilst we were battling through the 25 exams in 23 weeks of teaching, the team projects, the horrible confidence-shattering placements – but we tried to carry on. When we both finally broke, the university’s attitude was something akin to “See ya!” and that was that. Never mind that 14% of the course left at the end of the first year – an attrition rate of which any university should be ashamed. Have they investigated the reasons for this? Nope.

The sad thing is that the already beleaguered NHS pays for this training – and bursaries to support us while we’re studying. 14% of the students on my course = something like 20 students x tuition fees @ £3k /yr + bursary = a bit of a waste of money. Medical schools, precisely for this reason, are keen to reduce attrition rates to negligible levels – but in our SLT training, nobody seems to care.

On the plus side, at least for me and my friends who left, a study by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists reports that 80% of this year’s SLT graduates are unemployed. So perhaps we did the right thing after all.

Sexual healing

Last week I was doing mock interviews at a very good local school. This kind of work takes you down one of two directions mainly related to sensations of despair or joy. At this school I was pleased to be feeling the latter. The pupils were knowledgeable, interesting, inspiring and likeable. They were articulate – even here in the heart of chavspeak – and impassioned. Some of them talked so enthusiastically about their subjects that I found myself thinking “Yes, I’d like to study that subject too” – and that’s saying something when you’re interviewing an applicant for physics.

I find myself thinking wistfully back to that age when my overwhelming motivation in terms of the future was to leave school as soon as legally possible, leave home and get a job. I had never heard of university - people from my background were not encouraged to have aspirations. These days schools are well equipped with careers libraries, advisors and opportunities to investigate university options - at my school 21 years ago when I was about to leave, 'careers advice' constituted a visit to a dusty little office in the local town, staffed by a dusty old lady, to look in the dusty filing cabinet sparsely populated with ancient yellowing leaflets. The options were extreme - hairdressing, or join the army. Or, if you were really ambitious, you could get a job at the local Argyll wellie boot factory or the nearby nuclear power plant.

But back to the mock interviews. I'm sitting on one side of a very small table, so the applicant is very close to me.Young person number 6 comes in with a passion for English Lit, for which he's applied to some of our 'best' universities. I ask him "What have you been reading lately?" to which he replies "The Wife of Bath" (Chaucer). I say "What do you think of it?". He leans forward on one arm, with the other hand stroking a recent beard he's grown, looks deeply into my eyes and says "It's quite sexual".

Can't fault him for honesty, but it's an unusual answer in an interview. Let's hope Oxford are impressed.

Religion on the A130

My morning drive to the station yesterday was like some kind of religious experience. Not because I spent some of it taking the lord's name in vain as the classic Essex boy/man racer in ugly massive executive deathtrap tried to take me as his next victim, but because a huge golden sun was just coming up over the ploughed fields, into a clear blue sky. Everything was bathed in a golden light, pheasants were standing in the furrows untroubled by the rush of traffic and commuters around them. The world suddenly seemed a hopeful place.

It's things like this that make me love living in the country.

Coming home later my train took 1.5 hours to go 40 miles.

It's things like this that make me hate living in the country.

* this is one of my own pictures taken last christmas.