Hello,

I finally have a tutorial! It's on addiction and it will give me an essay to write while I have less reading to do next week, when I'm not studying either of the themes that we're doing lectures on in depth. The topics we're doing are getting more and more interesting now that we've covered the basics and can build on them with more clinically-relevent information. We had a lecture today on adult central nervous system plasticity - which is about the changes in the brain that cause phenomena like phantom limbs after amputation. I've also been working on my research project. I am now getting consistent results and the next step is getting some good photographs of the chick embryos before and after the marks that I put in them move. Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck getting the microscope camera to work. I'm not sure what the people working in the lab use it for but no-one seems to know how to take pictures of embryos with it! Things are also made more difficult by the fact that I have to book use of the camera in advance but it's not possible to tell when the embryos will be at the right stage to photograph as their development is quite variable.

I had a Scholars' Dinner last night, which was a nice evening although I was sat next to a maths tutor who wanted to talk about arithmetic sequences of primes all night. Luckily, one of my own tutors was sitting on the other side of me and he had slightly more interesting topics of conversation. On Tuesday night, I went to a talk on dangerous and severe personality disorders (DSPD) by a psychiatrist from Broadmoor Hospital. Part of the clinical teaching in psychiatry here involves going to Broadmoor and DSPD is a pilot project there for people who pose a risk of serious harm to others. It was a pleasant change to sit and listen without having to make lecture notes!

Troublesome tutorials

Hi,

The tutorial booking system is still proving troublesome. This year we have to choose tutorials on offer from a list on a website and then book them online, write an essay and turn up for the tutorial. It all sounds very simple but there are a distinct lack of tutorials on offer at the moment. I've been reularly checking the website but I was caught offguard today, not expecting any to come upon a Sunday. Several tutorials came up sometime in the last 24hours or so since I last checked and have all promptly been snapped up by other desperate tutorial-hunters. So I still have none booked for the term yet and I need to do between 3 and 5. There's still plenty of time but it would have been much better to get some done while things were quiet at the start of term. Oh well, I've emailed some tutors to ask if they'll put more up so hopefully I'll get some soon.

I've been accepted to stay at Oxford to clinical school (fortunately without the bother of having an interview) along with the friends who I'm planning on sharing a house with next year, so everything is getting sorted for then. I have a fairly busy week coming up, with some shared lectures from the "Genes and Development" option as well as my normal Neuro option lectures. There are also some talks that I'm planning on going to in the evenings and a Scholars dinner on Wednesday.

But now I'm going to write a letter of acceptance to the clinical school before I forget!

Bye.

and back to work

Hi,

The collections are over and term has properly started now. My collections went ok - one was just a critical analysis paper that can't really be revised for anyway, and the other had a very wide choice of essay questions to make up for the fact that we still have a lot of material to cover so we could just choose questions on the bits we'd already done.

I saw my project supervisor yesterday so that he could make suggestions for improvements on the work I did over the holidays. He's always a bit vague about what I need to do but I have made some changes that will hopefully make it better. There weren't any eggs in this week so I couldn't get on with any practical work but I should be able to get started again next week.

I had my first lecture of the term yesterday too, so I'm just doing some reading from the reading list for that now, before another lecture with another reading list this afternoon. I don't have a lot of work that I can be getting on with right now because there aren't any tutorials available for booking yet so I don't know what essays I will need to write. I hope they will come up soon because I know things will get much busier soon and it would be nice to get some essays out the way quickly.

Bye for now.

Back again

Hello again,

I hope you've had a good Christmas! I'm back in Oxford now - I moved in on Sunday but then went away to Northamptonshire with my college Christian Union from Monday to Wednesday. It was a great few days, and it was good to get away from Oxford while everyone's worrying about collections. I have one exam this afternoon and one on Saturday. They don't count for anything but they're good practice for the real things and ensure that we do some work over the holidays! I did take some work with me to Northamptonshire but there wasn't a lot of time to revise so I'm just getting some final cramming done now.

Our timetables for this term have appeared on the medical school website today. My chosen subject for the year, neuroscience, shares some lectures with the genes and development subject this term, which means that I have more lectures than I did last term. I never have more than 6 in a week, which is a lot less than the last couple of years (when it was more normal to have that many in a day) and doesn't sound a lot, but with reading lists for all of them and essays and seminars too it is going to involve a lot of work. I also have my research project to complete by the end of term. I did as much as possible of the write up over Christmas but the practical work is still going on. Hopefully, I'll carry on with that from next week. I wrote a first draft for my submitted essay on cerebral palsy during the holidays too, although that was a bit of a risk because the title hadn't been approved. Some forms got lost or something so the approval didn't come befre the holidays when it was supposed to, but fortunately it came yesterday so I can use the essay that I have written!

Back to the revision now! Bye.