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ravenSo. I'm back. Three days away from a computer and I forget how to type.
To begin with, happy birthday,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amchau. Hope it was a good one, and you're getting a long rambly email as soon as humanly possible. I got an Amazon parcel today - The Science of Discworld II: The Globe - so there will hopefully be forthcoming food for thought.
shipperkitten - Monday is cool and I'm looking forward to it. purplerainbow, did you contact Becca?
That dealt with, let's move on. You know, you all talk a lot. I had seventeen emails and skip?240 entries to take care of before I'd finished. In my friends page odyssey, I noticed some people talked about me, missed me, even read my fic. I'm profoundly grateful for this. In the normal course of things, I would have gone gooey anyway, but particularly after the events of the last few days, it's particularly appreciated.
So, where was I? Medlink. I will not write about it in as much detail as I generally do, because I would send you all off into peaceful sleep before I finished my next paragraph. I'm merely going to pick and choose the highlights.
Firstly, the characters. Myself. Raven, in a place where no-one knows her name. Not so good. An insignificant corvid among a crowd of five thousand. People, that is, not corvids. As far as I know I was the only one of those. With me most of the time, Rola. I never knew her very well until this year except as an old friend ofcucharita's - well, I like her. Some of her beliefs jar with my own, but each to their own. Then, Izzy. Izabella. Didn't know her well before, still don't, now. She doesn't talk much, but it isn't out of shyness - maybe she finds me too distasteful to talk to? I am unsure. Anyway. Then, not on Medlink but on the vet course, Vetsix, we had Steph and Meg. Steph, who finds me hysteria-inducing for some as yet unknown reason, and Meg, who needs no introduction.
The setting. Nottingham. The University of Nottingham, to be precise. Absolutely beautiful. Enormous, lush, verdant campus, dotted with the halls of residence, surrounding a massive field with frost-dripped trees, with the faculty buildings off at one side. If it weren't for the fact we had to walk everywhere I would have loved it. Even as it was, I did like it. The five thousand students were being housed in the halls of residence, which had wonderful names - Willoughby, Cavendish, Ancaster, Derby, Florence Boot, etc. I was in Florence Boot. Rola and Izzy were in Willoughby, and Steph and Meg, when they arrived, in Derby. Therefore, all our rooms were different. I maintain mine was prettiest, and biggest, and the only one with its own shower, but I paid for that by having it so far from all the others. Steph's greatest fear is communal showers. Interesting.
There were of course five thousand other people, most of whom seemed to be from Essex, one of whom had bright green hair, three of whom were Indian and lived next door to me, but none affected me very much.
The first day is rather blurry. The main highlight is the fact I missed the train. How I did it, I have no idea. My mother wanted to see the university, so she was coming on the train with me, but we missed it. By about two minutes, but missed it nevertheless. We got the next one, and off we went. The train crossed the Pennines. I liked it. Once we got there, we realised how cold it was. I said at the time that we're used to a coastal climate. I have never lived more than half a mile inland. But there, down south in the middle of England, it was cold. Freezing. I was very very chilly by the time we finally reached the university.
It was rather difficult to dislodge my mother, but it was done in the end, and I, with my room key safe in my pocket and time on my hands, ambled off down to the Medlink exhibition. It was fairly interesting; there were stalls and displays by lots of universities, medical schools and royal colleges, and even some by the armed forces. The armed forces will sponsor you in med school, apparently; all expenses paid, as long as you go on to serve for six years. Rola's thinking about it, and Pedar asked later why I wasn't. I think I said, "It's all politics," and he did agree. I don't think I could maintain my political views if sponsored by the armed forces. My mother was an army doctor, to add a twist, but still.
I wrote my name down for Oxford and Cambridge prospectuses, met a boy called Chris to talk to, and when ambling off to Florence Boot, ran into Rola, Izzy and Laura Preston, who was only there for that day, having been on the previous course. We queued up for dinner at Willoughby, and then went for our first lecture. It was delivered by a man named Garry Craven. He's a doctor at Queen's Medical Centre (it's the Nottingham med school) and is one of the most eloquent, charismatic people I have ever met. If he got struck off tomorrow, he could make his living doing stand-up. He had 'em rolling in the aisles. He was good. The lecture (like all his lectures) was a pep talk, mixed with practical advice on how to fill in UCAS forms and how to apply.
And so endeth the first day. I fell asleep at midnight and slept through until eight in the morning. Breakfast was a sleepy affair. I had to walk to Queen's that morning, and it was freezing cold outside and it was a forty-five minute walk. Not fun at all. The lecture, entitled "Studying Abroad", was quite good - it was about how you would study medicine in Grenada or Prague - but I didn't like the Clinical Skills bit. I did not enjoy Wednesday. There was a karaoke thing in the evening, where I ran into Laura, Sara and Corinne, three old friends who go to school withshipperkitten, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
osiris13, and purplerainbow. Laura and Sara sang Lady Marmalade. I did try to take pictures, I did! They just came out all wrong!
Thursday involved a game called "Casualty Alert." It involved getting into groups of sixteen people, and each person taking a role. There were senior house officer, consultant, haemotologist, radiologist, patients one to five, etc, and setting up a mock A and E situation. We got assessed, given points for doing things right and having them taken away for doing stuff wrong - ie, thirty points were taken if a patient died. In our group, there were me, Rola and Izzy, some boys from London whom I didn't like, and two boys from down south, called Steve and Toby but we never found out which was which. They were cute to the point of edibility. Together, we were Group A. There were fourteen groups overall.
At the end of the first round, Group E were first and Group K were last. At the end of the second round, Group E won, with 105 points out of a possible 150, and.... "Could we have a big hand for the losers, Group A, with five points!"
Yeah. We all suck. The horrible part is, we got ten bonus points. If we hadn't, we would have had minus five points. The mind boggles. One of the cute boys did say, "We let a patient die. And he only had a broken wrist."
No, I don't know how we did it. We just did. I don't think anyone in the sixteen-strong group will ever go into A and E medicine/surgery, ever.
Today, then. The last of the lectures. We'd had Prosthetics (good), Surgery (good, but boring lecturer), A and E (very good, with gruesome slides), Paediatrics (all right) and Psychiatry was today (I loved it). Also today was a medical students forum. It was good, nothing special, but one anecdote a student told deserves repetition. It concerns a man who had an eight-inch model of Nelson's Column stuck in his rectum. After extraction, when this fact was pointed out to him, he said, "Oh, that's Nelson. He lives up there."
Argh.
And that is that. We went off to the station at the appointed time, met cute boy again - he poked Rola and drank my hot chocolate - and got on the train home. On the way, we dicussed and debated various points of religion, theology and ethics, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. When we got to Lime Street, my mother picked me up.
On my way home, I told my mother it was a good experience, but I'm not doing medicine.
She's still not talking to me.
So far, so good.
To begin with, happy birthday,
amchau. Hope it was a good one, and you're getting a long rambly email as soon as humanly possible. I got an Amazon parcel today - The Science of Discworld II: The Globe - so there will hopefully be forthcoming food for thought.shipperkitten - Monday is cool and I'm looking forward to it. purplerainbow, did you contact Becca?That dealt with, let's move on. You know, you all talk a lot. I had seventeen emails and skip?240 entries to take care of before I'd finished. In my friends page odyssey, I noticed some people talked about me, missed me, even read my fic. I'm profoundly grateful for this. In the normal course of things, I would have gone gooey anyway, but particularly after the events of the last few days, it's particularly appreciated.
So, where was I? Medlink. I will not write about it in as much detail as I generally do, because I would send you all off into peaceful sleep before I finished my next paragraph. I'm merely going to pick and choose the highlights.
Firstly, the characters. Myself. Raven, in a place where no-one knows her name. Not so good. An insignificant corvid among a crowd of five thousand. People, that is, not corvids. As far as I know I was the only one of those. With me most of the time, Rola. I never knew her very well until this year except as an old friend of
cucharita's - well, I like her. Some of her beliefs jar with my own, but each to their own. Then, Izzy. Izabella. Didn't know her well before, still don't, now. She doesn't talk much, but it isn't out of shyness - maybe she finds me too distasteful to talk to? I am unsure. Anyway. Then, not on Medlink but on the vet course, Vetsix, we had Steph and Meg. Steph, who finds me hysteria-inducing for some as yet unknown reason, and Meg, who needs no introduction. The setting. Nottingham. The University of Nottingham, to be precise. Absolutely beautiful. Enormous, lush, verdant campus, dotted with the halls of residence, surrounding a massive field with frost-dripped trees, with the faculty buildings off at one side. If it weren't for the fact we had to walk everywhere I would have loved it. Even as it was, I did like it. The five thousand students were being housed in the halls of residence, which had wonderful names - Willoughby, Cavendish, Ancaster, Derby, Florence Boot, etc. I was in Florence Boot. Rola and Izzy were in Willoughby, and Steph and Meg, when they arrived, in Derby. Therefore, all our rooms were different. I maintain mine was prettiest, and biggest, and the only one with its own shower, but I paid for that by having it so far from all the others. Steph's greatest fear is communal showers. Interesting.
There were of course five thousand other people, most of whom seemed to be from Essex, one of whom had bright green hair, three of whom were Indian and lived next door to me, but none affected me very much.
The first day is rather blurry. The main highlight is the fact I missed the train. How I did it, I have no idea. My mother wanted to see the university, so she was coming on the train with me, but we missed it. By about two minutes, but missed it nevertheless. We got the next one, and off we went. The train crossed the Pennines. I liked it. Once we got there, we realised how cold it was. I said at the time that we're used to a coastal climate. I have never lived more than half a mile inland. But there, down south in the middle of England, it was cold. Freezing. I was very very chilly by the time we finally reached the university.
It was rather difficult to dislodge my mother, but it was done in the end, and I, with my room key safe in my pocket and time on my hands, ambled off down to the Medlink exhibition. It was fairly interesting; there were stalls and displays by lots of universities, medical schools and royal colleges, and even some by the armed forces. The armed forces will sponsor you in med school, apparently; all expenses paid, as long as you go on to serve for six years. Rola's thinking about it, and Pedar asked later why I wasn't. I think I said, "It's all politics," and he did agree. I don't think I could maintain my political views if sponsored by the armed forces. My mother was an army doctor, to add a twist, but still.
I wrote my name down for Oxford and Cambridge prospectuses, met a boy called Chris to talk to, and when ambling off to Florence Boot, ran into Rola, Izzy and Laura Preston, who was only there for that day, having been on the previous course. We queued up for dinner at Willoughby, and then went for our first lecture. It was delivered by a man named Garry Craven. He's a doctor at Queen's Medical Centre (it's the Nottingham med school) and is one of the most eloquent, charismatic people I have ever met. If he got struck off tomorrow, he could make his living doing stand-up. He had 'em rolling in the aisles. He was good. The lecture (like all his lectures) was a pep talk, mixed with practical advice on how to fill in UCAS forms and how to apply.
And so endeth the first day. I fell asleep at midnight and slept through until eight in the morning. Breakfast was a sleepy affair. I had to walk to Queen's that morning, and it was freezing cold outside and it was a forty-five minute walk. Not fun at all. The lecture, entitled "Studying Abroad", was quite good - it was about how you would study medicine in Grenada or Prague - but I didn't like the Clinical Skills bit. I did not enjoy Wednesday. There was a karaoke thing in the evening, where I ran into Laura, Sara and Corinne, three old friends who go to school with
shipperkitten, osiris13, and purplerainbow. Laura and Sara sang Lady Marmalade. I did try to take pictures, I did! They just came out all wrong!Thursday involved a game called "Casualty Alert." It involved getting into groups of sixteen people, and each person taking a role. There were senior house officer, consultant, haemotologist, radiologist, patients one to five, etc, and setting up a mock A and E situation. We got assessed, given points for doing things right and having them taken away for doing stuff wrong - ie, thirty points were taken if a patient died. In our group, there were me, Rola and Izzy, some boys from London whom I didn't like, and two boys from down south, called Steve and Toby but we never found out which was which. They were cute to the point of edibility. Together, we were Group A. There were fourteen groups overall.
At the end of the first round, Group E were first and Group K were last. At the end of the second round, Group E won, with 105 points out of a possible 150, and.... "Could we have a big hand for the losers, Group A, with five points!"
Yeah. We all suck. The horrible part is, we got ten bonus points. If we hadn't, we would have had minus five points. The mind boggles. One of the cute boys did say, "We let a patient die. And he only had a broken wrist."
No, I don't know how we did it. We just did. I don't think anyone in the sixteen-strong group will ever go into A and E medicine/surgery, ever.
Today, then. The last of the lectures. We'd had Prosthetics (good), Surgery (good, but boring lecturer), A and E (very good, with gruesome slides), Paediatrics (all right) and Psychiatry was today (I loved it). Also today was a medical students forum. It was good, nothing special, but one anecdote a student told deserves repetition. It concerns a man who had an eight-inch model of Nelson's Column stuck in his rectum. After extraction, when this fact was pointed out to him, he said, "Oh, that's Nelson. He lives up there."
Argh.
And that is that. We went off to the station at the appointed time, met cute boy again - he poked Rola and drank my hot chocolate - and got on the train home. On the way, we dicussed and debated various points of religion, theology and ethics, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. When we got to Lime Street, my mother picked me up.
On my way home, I told my mother it was a good experience, but I'm not doing medicine.
She's still not talking to me.
So far, so good.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
welcome back!
on 2003-12-19 08:26 pm (UTC)i got your card yesterday.. i have yet to send yours, as i have not had time to actually go inside the post office to send it. i've only dropped the rest of them into the outside box. tomorrow, hopefully, i will be able to do that.. i've got some other packages to send as well, so it should get sent!
no subject
on 2003-12-19 08:47 pm (UTC)(And I'm not just trying to wriggle back into your good graces after failing to mention you in any entries. I'll do it now, though, just in case:
no subject
on 2003-12-20 03:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-12-19 09:52 pm (UTC)And hurrah for you tough chickie for standing your ground and saying you won't do medicine!
no subject
on 2003-12-20 03:25 am (UTC)Missed you too.
no subject
on 2003-12-20 12:41 am (UTC)you're getting a long rambly email as soon as humanly possible.
I shall look forward to it. And return it in kind, with fic-- nearly 3000 more words!
(I need an icon for this crossover. Mind if I use your Ponder picture?)
no subject
on 2003-12-20 03:27 am (UTC)Of course, use my Ponder picture. It's too cute, more people should see it.
no subject
on 2003-12-20 08:10 am (UTC)I'm replying to your e-mail *right now*, and also posting with my shiny new crossover icon. Like it?
no subject
on 2003-12-20 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
on 2003-12-20 08:28 am (UTC)And I'm sending the reply *right now*...
no subject
on 2003-12-20 09:54 am (UTC)If you were in need of a visual for the Harry we're writing...
no subject
on 2003-12-20 01:00 pm (UTC)Fandoms on top of fandoms...
no subject
on 2003-12-21 02:17 am (UTC)No. Two fandoms is enough. Even if the Potter/Buffy/Smallville/Disc/M*A*S*H thing is very tempting.
no subject
on 2003-12-20 01:23 pm (UTC)Nottingham campus is pretty, though. I'm just scared by the number of students with BMWs.
no subject
on 2003-12-20 01:27 pm (UTC)The mind boggles. And I was also alarmed by the BMWs - people insisted on trying to run me over!