| Description | Interview with Rachel Kemp, who has just completed her MB ChB and who is embarking on her career as a doctor shortly. Recorded on 5 July 2001 by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview :
J Well, greetings Rachel and congratulations on completing your MB ChB, it's a long struggle isn't it? Five years?
K Six years now.
J Six years for you? Did you do an intercalated degree? What was that in?
K My intercalated degree was in, I looked at the psychological and psycho-social sequelae of ocular trauma, which is quite a mouthful.
J Means somebody's had an eye injury and you wanted to know it affected them?
K Yes, that's right, absolutely.
J Interesting.
K It was really interesting.
J Do you think that's the field you'll end up in, eye surgery or eye treatment?
K Not eyes, perhaps psychiatry.
J Interesting.
K It's given me a flavour for post-traumatic stress and things like that that, I'd like to further my interest there.
J Yes, that's quite a burgeoning subject, isn't it, with our own man here, David Alexander, and others.
K He was my supervisor, so I worked with him.
J It would be very interesting to see if that speciality goes on growing or whether it will be a nine day wonder.
K Storm in a tea cup so to speak.
J At the moment at any rate it's surfing quite high.
K Yes, absolutely.
J Sorry, I didn't mean to get distracted on that.
K No, that's OK, not at all.
J You did the five year MB ChB with this in the middle?
K That's right.
J Were you one of the those who came in with the new integrated curriculum?
K I was the first year of the new curriculum so we were the guinea pigs.
J Has it worked well? I bet there's been some blips but…
K It has. I've had the best of both worlds because initially I was the guinea pig in the first year, but because I did the intercalated degree I was then in the second year so I benefited from some of the recommendations that the previous year had made, but overall I think it was definitely a step in the right direction. Compared with people who have done the old course, I think we're rounder, better doctors maybe?
J Well I hope so because that's what it was supposed to be about.
K Yes, I think so.
J Was that one of the factors that drew you to Aberdeen, in fact, that you would be doing the integrated degree?
K Most definitely.
J At the time, I think Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow were offering it, or perhaps only Dundee and Aberdeen?
K Aberdeen and Dundee were the only ones who were offering it, Glasgow and Edinburgh were still on the old course.
J Edinburgh still is?
K Edinburgh still is, I think, Glasgow changed the year after Aberdeen. So it was a big factor.
J What else drew you to Aberdeen because I think you said your home was Edinburgh?
K That's right. I'm originally from Edinburgh, I didn't want to stay at home. I wanted to move away, a chance for freedom and maybe experience university and university hall life and things like that. So then I thought, where shall I go? And I was quite keen to stay in Scotland. I was quite keen to go away, but not too far away from home that you couldn't come home for a weekend if you wanted and my two choices were Aberdeen and Glasgow. And I went for Aberdeen in the end because of the course. I liked the way it was set up, the whole city as well, was more manageable. It was quite similar to Edinburgh, more similar to Edinburgh than Glasgow was and I thought I'd probably be more settled here.
J And do you think it was the right choice, looking back?
K Absolutely.
J Absolutely right for you at the time?
K For me at the time, definitely.
J Although now you're going to spread your wings and move on to Glasgow is that right?
K Yes, I know, Glasgow is getting me eventually, yes, I'm going to work in Glasgow. But I wouldn't have changed it, I wouldn't have had it any other way.
J And why medicine, was it family or a personal choice?
K No, there is no medicine in my family at all I'm the first of a new generation so to speak.
J Strong in science at school?
K Yes and no, not particularly, I've just always, I think since I was about 12, you know when I thought, what am I going to do? I thought I'd like to be a doctor, and it's just a feeling I've always had and that has just grown and grown and grown so when I started doing sciences in secondary school I was interested.
J Which was your school in Edinburgh?
K I went to Craigmount High School.
J Oh, yes, I know, we have a lot of pupils from there to Aberdeen.
K Really?
J Yes, of the non-independent schools in Edinburgh, I think it's probably the one that sends us the most pupils.
K Is that right? There were only about three, four from my school up here in my year.
J So you were doing something a bit unusual for your year?
K Yes, that's right.
J OK, so you've come up to Aberdeen, which you didn't know at all, apart from your visit, or had you another connection?
K I'd never been before.
J And you arrive one wet or sunny day in September and what were your originally impressions, can you remember?
K I remember being quite nervous. I remember being very excited, and then the day that I was actually packing up and trying to go, the drive up, I remember thinking what have I let myself in for? And then we got in and you had to register at your halls and I was in Hillhead Halls in Fyfe House. My Mum and Dad drove me up and we went and found my room, and I got all settled in and then it was time for Mum and Dad to leave and I didn't really know what to do. But, it was great, I was in a corridor full of girls, and everyone's parents were leaving around about the same time, and we just got to know each other …
J Fairly quickly?
K Very quickly. Where are you from? What do you do? What are doing here? Any brothers and sisters? OK let's go out and explore.
J So halls of residence life in a sense clicked for you from the word go. So that was one of the things you were hoping to get out of university, that kind of contact. In some ways, looking back, it seems a bit babyish, almost like going to a boarding school.
K I know, I know.
J In other ways, I suppose it works very well socially.
K I think it's a wonderful … it's a great way to make friends, quickly as you say.
J So, let's come back to the hall and residential experience in a moment. But just staying with the course, you then had your first induction lectures and things after freshers week. How soon did you begin meeting patients, because this is supposed to be one of the features of the new integrated curriculum?
K That's right, from what I can remember, we were given patients every so often. Patients would come into lectures when we were in first year. I remember a pregnant lady coming in and speaking to us about her pregnancy, what it was like and so on. But from the first day of second year, we were on the wards and seeing patients four times a week, four mornings a week which was absolutely outstanding, very different to any of the other universities. What the universities were offering …
J That's a lot of patient contact, goodness.
K A lot of experience.
J Yes I hadn't realised it was quite as intensive as that. How large were the groups?
K From what I can remember, I think it was about six or seven.
J Quite small then?
K Quite small. Small enough that you couldn't get away with not speaking. You were thrown in at the deep end, never having done it before, suddenly standing round a patient's bed with a consultant firing questions at you. And of course, you've got no idea!
J How interesting, I hadn't realised it was as tough as that though.
K Best way to learn I think.
J Baptism of fire. And did you get exposure to a wide range of different types of illness or was it concentrated in particular areas?
K Another thing about the Aberdeen course which was a major pull factor so to speak was that they taught in systems. And the first year was all about the normal physiology, it was normality, what happens in your normal healthy body. And then in the second year you would go and do the pathology of the different systems. So you would look at the cardio-vascular system, the respiratory, the intestinal system etc. etc. and so when you were doing teaching on the wards, the teaching would correspond. If you were learning cardio-vascular …
J You'd be in a heart ward?
K You wouldn't necessarily be in a heart ward, you'd be with a patient who might have liver disease, but for the sake of the teaching you would give him a cardio-vascular exam.
J Oh I see, that's very well thought through then. Good. And I think another feature of the course is that you can do, quite apart from the intercalated degree, you can do quite a lot of options at different periods of the course?
K That's right, you get quite a lot of choice. There's certain things, there's a community course which you do from first to third year, which is once a week, with a different group of people who you don't normally meet with, you do general practice based work, and a lot of discussion topics, you go out and see patients in their own homes, do case studies things like that. A chance to talk about stuff that your not really taught about in the pathology of the cardio-vascular system and then you can also do special study modules of which you do one a year for the first four years and you can do anything from the genetics of Dolly the sheep to the ethics of palliative care and death and dying. You can choose and do a four week intensive module and work with other people and produce a project at the end and stand up and do talks and presentations.
J So there's quite an emphasis on communicative skills as well?
K That's another thing that there's been a major push on in the new course.
J It all sounds extremely interesting, I quite wish I could go back and do all this. What about, in contrast, the first year. Is that still very sort of schooly-sciencey or…?
K Some parts of it are. You need to do your basic bio-chemistry and things like that, but the actual physiology that you learn is so new … the biochemistry is like chemistry and biology at school but the actual physiology that you learn is brand new and it's interesting because suddenly you're learning why the heart pumps or whatever and that's interspersed with your anatomy and your cadavers, so that gives you a bit of a twist.
J Anatomy plays rather a smaller part than it used to in the old curriculum I gather, is that correct?
K That's right, even in our new curriculum, our anatomy is not up to speed as well as people who'd done the old curriculum.
J You'd spend a whole year on the heel or whatever it was?
K That's right.
J Looking back on the whole course, then, taking the whole five years together, has it left you with any sense of being a bit itsy bitsy or has it left you with a sense of - really I've got a structure here and such gaps as there are I can fill in myself?
K I think so, definitely. I think more than anything it's given you a way … a sort of structure to learn about things. You can't really understand why what goes wrong if you don't understand why it should go right in the first place. And then if you understand why it goes right then you understand why it goes wrong, then how it goes wrong, so what are you going to do about it. So the course is very much based on first principles and they lead you through it right up until fourth year, and sort of tease you and give you bits of information so you can build this jigsaw together.
J And do you feel reasonably confident that another of what I imagine is an aim of the course has been realised, i.e.: the notion that you'll be able to go on educating yourself through your professional life?
K I think so, you have to in medicine, you have to keep up to date with all the new stuff coming left right and centre, bombarding you.
J And was it a hard course? I don't mean hard in the sense of just academically demanding, did you feel that you had to work pretty hard to keep up with it, or did most people do that I should say, rather than take a personal view.
K I think it is a hard course. It has its ups and it has its downs. At exam time it is very stressful, it's a lot, a lot of work and I think I never realised that when I went into it.
J Really?
K No, I thought you'd just osmose all this information and suddenly one day you'd wake up and you'd be a doctor. I maybe naively didn't think of the hours that I'd have to spend at a desk. Hard work but I think worth it. I think it's become easier to cope with now, once your other friends graduate and leave. Because if you're friends with people who are doing an English degree, or whatever …
J From your point of view not having to do any work at all!
K Well, absolutely, they've got two or three, four hours a week, and although the rest of the time they might have to spend in the library, you're, it's like from day one you're in training for a job, it's not like you're studying, so it's like you're doing an apprenticeship from day one, and you work 9-5 five days a week. So it's quite a lot of responsibility in that way and that can be quite tough sometimes, just knowing that every day you've got to get up and you've got to do the same thing again.
J That's a very interesting observation about your friends moving on. Well for two reasons, one it suggests to me that you did make non-medical friends which is interesting but also, that once they'd moved on perhaps you became more of a closed society of medics.
K Absolutely, a hundred percent spot on.
J Interesting, because of both parts of your observation, I mean on the one hand it's very reassuring I'm sure as a patient that doctors actually can speak to people who aren't medics. And you found that quite a lot of your friends were not medics at all?
K Yes, most definitely.
J And have you kept in touch with anybody or have they passed out of your life?
K Half and half. You make so many friends, there's no way that you can stay in contact with them all. Along the grapevine you keep up to date with what everybody's doing who has moved on, particularly the people you were close to. You still see them, whenever … a lot of people go to London these days, big cities, so if you're down in London, or Edinburgh or wherever.
J You know you'll always find a network of people you knew in your first couple of years at university. That's interesting. But as you move further into the course and your original friends have moved on because they've graduated, did you then find that the majority of people you were speaking to were all medics and were all very busy?
K Yes.
J Does this shut out the parts of University life that are not to do with the academic part, i.e.: do you have any time for sports, for societies, for enjoyment?
K Yes you do, oh yes. Yes you can do things but, for example Wednesday afternoons, that's when the University does sports but you can't because your up at the hospital.
J So you would not be able to be - let's say a first team player in any sport?
K I think there are ways around it but not easily. I mean I know people who have done it, but not easily at all. I think you do, you're very much your own unit, and you can very easily be absorbed by it, because you're at a different location to the rest of the University and you're entirely self-sufficient really, with the friends you have, the canteens, the social areas, the timings of all your lectures and things. And I think from time to time when we have had the opportunity to come down onto campus, you think Oh, wouldn't it have been nice if we could have done some of this?
J So did you in your own experience join any student societies or …?
K I've been a member of the King's College Chapel Choir for the last six years.
J That's quite time-consuming isn't it?
K That's every Sunday morning and every Tuesday evening which has been brilliant. I've really enjoyed it.
J Taking you right out of medicine.
K And kept a completely non-medic circle. I mean for a long time, it's only just in the past year that another medic has joined and for those whole five years it was just me, so it was a nice change. A good break.
J Did you join, without being too personal, for religious or for musical reasons?
K Both. I think really more so for musical reasons, I was very keen on singing, I'd got my grade 8 at school and done a lot of choral work and really wanted to keep that on, and I think probably if I hadn't have done that, that also combined - oh well, I can go to church at the same time, but if I hadn't have done that I hoped I would have found a church and gone to church anyway.
J I've perhaps heard you as a soloist then on some of the…?
K Possibly, very possibly.
J Have you sung at graduations and things?
K Not solos, but I have sung … but if you've been to the concerts we have had, I have a choral scholarship so we've done quite a lot.
J Oh good, that's interesting and perhaps been helpful to you financially?
K Yes, that's been lovely pocket money, gives you a little holiday at the end of the year.
J That's why your name is vaguely familiar to me then. OK, well that's fascinating thus far Rachel. Do you think that, how shall I put this? Do you think that the University student community loses out from the fact that medics really haven't the time to take part in much student activity? They used to, of course, be the leaders in everything in the University. If I go back to when I first came in the 1960's, before you were born no doubt, you know, the president of the SRC and those sort of people tended to be medics, now it's different, but medical students were very, very active in general student life, I guess they're not at all now.
K No. I think the people who are very good will always be very good and they'll go and pursue their interests …
J Like you've done with singing?
K Well, yes indeed, or they'll go and pursue their sailing or their acting and you do get them, but they're dispersed, they're seldom found. I'm not really sure why that is, maybe it is because of the demands of the course, maybe it's because we're not here on campus, and we are apart. Maybe it's because the medics have their own society, and they do their own sports, their football and their hockey …
J And their socialising and their medical balls and things, yes. Interesting, it sounds to me that there is a bit of an overall loss to the University community that you have to be so separate.
K I think yes, probably, it's a totally different thing, unless you're going to put the hospital down on campus, then there is no way round it.
J I think still you would feel apart, because as you've explained your course is so much more career orientated, so demanding. What about upward and downward connections between medical students? Did you stick very much in your own year or did you have connections with those in years ahead of you and so on?
K I was very much a speak to everybody across the years. That was partly because I had to join a new year after I'd done my intercalated degree so, I think that was a difficult transition because you'd had a year apart with thirty, there was thirty of us did the intercalated degree, and we got actually really quite close because we were working together all the time and those people who did the degree still remain my closest network of friends, but when you go into a new year and suddenly you're having to start all over again from scratch when you thought you were fairly settled … which was quite interesting. I think you had to decide, you've got to either maintain friends with either your new year or your old year, and you couldn't do both, you just didn't have the time to do both.
J Which did you plump for?
K The new year.
J Which seems the logical choice sadly. What about formal systems of mentoring are there any among medical students, having older students look after younger ones? There is such a system?
K You get there on day one, and if you join the medical society, which I'm sure most, about 95% of people do, and all the girls are given a 'dad' and all the boys are given a 'mum'.
J Oh, I didn't realise it had a sexist basis.
K Yes, it does. And that's quite good, and I'm still in touch with my 'dad.'
J And he would have graduated what two years ahead of you probably, how interesting. And what about staff, you have regents in medicine?
K That's right.
J And are they helpful?
K There's a lot of controversy over the regent system to be honest with you, it doesn't work nearly as well on it could.
J Why is that?
K I think to be honest with you it's very much dependent upon the regent. I know people who had a regent and they've been round at their house for dinner and things like that. I think people generally choose a mentor, someone to look up to, from their own experience rather than the person that they're given because often that relationship won't click as well as the relationship that you can make yourself from your own experiences and I think if I were in trouble I wouldn't probably go to my regent I would go to a member of staff who I had formed a closer relationship with I think. I think there may be some benefit, and maybe you choose your own regent or whatever.
J Although it would be difficult to choose until you'd had some experience of them, perhaps you ought to be able to change at the end of the year. Select your regent. What would you say about staff-student relationships generally? I don't mean improper ones, but were they friendly?
K Oh, superb, the staff generally - there's always a few exceptions - on the whole, absolutely fantastic, very supportive.
J Fairly formal or not?
K Some are, some aren't. The staff who get involved in the social activities, they become more like friends by the end of it and it's quite difficult when you come into an exam or something like that and this person who's been so helpful, they've been dressing up - this male consultant's been dressing up in tights and girl's skirts and dancing around for one of the sketches in the review and suddenly they're examining you about haematology and you just don't know what to say.
J Suddenly changed places?
K But no, on the whole I really am very impressed with things.
J Did that change over time, was there greater formality in first year and then as you went on the course you got closer?
K I think so.
J I suppose, that would be inevitable I would think.
K You were quite daunted by all these doctors with all that experience and wisdom and I think as time comes on they get to know you and you get to know them, you respect each other more and the relationship builds and by the end of it … everyone chases their different favourites.
J Who were favourites other than your supervisor David Alexander you've mentioned?
K Oh he is amazing, absolutely fantastic.
J Very nice man, I've known him for years.
K Absolutely wonderful I cannot sing his praises enough. I think it goes right back to first year actually, Dr Cotter and Dr Johnson.
J Johnson I know but not Cotter.
K They were just sterling sports and very helpful people who would go out of their way to stop and speak to you, remember your face from day one and even now you pass them in the corridor and they want to stop and chat to you, which is lovely. And then you meet the consultants as you go through and a lot of them are great …
J Great characters or just nice people who are good at their jobs?
K You meet the people who are just good laughs and then you meet the people who are … Professor Brunt, he's just retired, I remember him teaching me on the very first day of second year and I just thought you know if I'm going to be a doctor I want to be just like him.
J That's the sort of doctor I'd like to be?
K There's a lot of inspirational characters. Sometimes you get quite bogged down in medicine because it is so long, and it's so much to learn and you just feel that your never going to get there and every so often you really need those people they just give you a boost. They just make you think this is why I'm doing this because I want to be like that.
J Fascinating, that's very interesting. What a responsibility. Anything you think on academic side that we should have covered that we haven't in this chat so far?
K If I can just say about my BSc, my intercalated degree, that was an amazing opportunity, I got a lot out of that I got a couple of presentations, I actually went to the world conference on trauma in Melbourne with David Alexander and with his team. That was just fantastic, not only for me personally but professionally for my CV and thing s like that, and that was brilliant travelling as a student in what had been all members of staff - I think seven of us went - and suddenly your not a student any more.
J You're part of the team?
K Yes a team member, that was great. And certainly that has stood me - I swithered for months about whether to do the BSc and I was very much, I'm not going to do it and it was just the last day, and then two minutes before the deadline I thought, right, I'll do it and signed on the dotted line and it was really the best decision I've made another year as a student was just brilliant and I think it stood us in good stead for our research capabilities and our knowledge of how to go about a research project and things like that, working on your own and guiding yourself.
J So your final year, this final year, the elective was a bit of a disappointment by comparison?
K Well no, not at all, I went to Egypt and looked at the levels, the psychological state of Sudanese refugees who are living in Cairo at the moment, so that was very interesting, the best of both worlds, Egyptian culture and Sudanese culture and the collision of it.
J That was of course looking back to the work you'd started in your BSc?
K Absolutely. They might make a psychiatrist out of me yet.
J It's a long haul, psychiatry. How long a training is it, another three years?
K It's another three years before you sit your exams and things.
J But you've got to do your general years first, two years?
K Just one, six months and six months.
J Well, switching from the academic side and coming back a little bit more to the student social life that we have talked about a good deal. You started off in hall of residence at Hillhead, did you stay just one year there?
K Yes.
J And then moved on to what sort of accommodation?
K I've been in the same flat for the past five years.
J How did that come about?
K My parents were quite keen to buy a place which I think more and more people seem to be doing now, particularly as the course was longer, that it would be another four, possibly five years and it just seemed like you were paying rent, you know dead money and this was seen as an investment. And it's been great, I've been there for five years and had various different people in through.
J You've been the homeowner.
K I've been the homeowner, that's right.
J Did you buy a house or flat?
K A flat.
J Up near the hospital?
K No, just in Summer Street, off Union Street.
J Pretty central, no difficulty in getting fellow lodgers?
K No, no difficulty at all.
J Were they medics or were they miscellaneous?
K Now let me think. I lived with two medics for two years and then I lived with a medic and a lawyer, and then a girl who was doing an MSc lived with me and now I'm living with a doctor, someone who graduated from my old class. So it's been quite nice, it's been a regular turnover which has been nice, I think you can stagnate if you live with people for too long.
J How has it worked out well from the practical point of view, I mean financially and otherwise. Has it been a good investment?
K Not particularly. At the moment the market …
J Has gone flat has it?
K Rock bottom.
J So will you hold on or?
K No, I'm actually in the process of selling the flat.
J Will you get your money back at least?
K I hope so. I really hope so , but it's dubious, as I say the market, suddenly there's two bedroomed flats going up left right and centre and if people are given the option of shall we have a new one or shall we have an old one, they're going to go for the new one.
J But at any rate as you say, it's saved you having to pay rent all this time. [?] Perhaps Glasgow will be easier from that point of view. Staying for the moment with the financial side you told me you had a choral scholarship but that was a small one, were you into the system early enough to still have a grant or were you self financing?
K I was, but I wasn't eligible for a grant. I was self-financing, my parents have supported me through.
J Have your parents supported you right through?
K Yes, right through. They can't wait to get rid of me now.
J You'll get to look after them in their old age?
K Absolutely, pay them back.
J …Take out a student loan, will you graduate with a vast burden of debt?
K Oh yes.
J Like?
K Five times £1700.
J How long will that take you pay off once you start work?
K I'm not sure, I think that's up to me. Fortunately we're paid fairly well. Well not fairly well considering the hours that we work if you break it down but because we work such long hours we are fortunate enough that that shouldn't be a problem which I think has been a security, you know when we were taking out the debt, the loans. We had the job security to know that it would be highly unlikely that we wouldn't get a job. So yes, a lot of money, but I'm fairly well off compared with a lot of other people.
J Was this an issue among your friends, the other medics, this issue of how we shall pay our way?
K Oh, absolutely, I mean the money thing …
J Proved to be a major topic?
K And proved to be a major topic … I think when you're in second year and you think oh I'll have a student loan a bit of extra pocket money and then it becomes your fourth year, I need a loan I need to eat and then in fifth year you've got this elective that you need to fund yourself and so the loan goes on that. And then people think goodness me, I just can't really see any way out of this downward spiral and I'm still here for another three years before I graduate etc. etc. I'm keen to start work and start getting my repayments back.
J Well, if it cheers you up, I've heard many medics say that provided you don't live extravagantly in your early years after qualification you can in fact pay it back surprisingly quickly. Other than money what were the sort of issues that you found were mostly the ones that you and your contemporaries were concerned about while you were at university? It's quite a long period of time, you know there could be quite a lot of social change in that period. Were you aware of that?
K That's caught me on the hop that one. I think looking back, I think it's just how much we have matured really strikes me. The conversations have become, they're not really different, people are still talking about the same things, you know, the course, work, socialising, who you're going to meet at the weekend, when's your next holiday, who's number one. The topics haven't really changed but the way you speak about them and the confidence and the assurance in yourself I think has really grown looking back to first year. People were a lot more concerned about what people thought of them, and if there was any disharmony amongst people but now people are a lot more secure in themselves and who they are as people, I'm happy to talk because I'm happily in myself, rather than when we were younger everyone was coming from different backgrounds and suddenly thrown in with all this new stuff and everyone had different experiences and I think everyone was struggling possibly to find their way a bit but I think you don't really realise it at the time, you just have a whale of a time and it's only now with a bit more ticks on the boxes.
J Were any of your friends at all interested in politics, even single issue politics like the environment and stuff like that?
K Not really.
J So you subscribe to the view that students are apathetic in that sense politically apathetic. Or students known to you I should say?
K I think so, generally. I've never found it a particularly burning issue so I've never been particularly keen to talk about it. But I do know people who, it really sort of lights their fire politics, would love a good argument about it. I think for us as medics it's been ethics really.
J The state of the health service, or don't you dare talk about that? You do, you talk a lot about that?
K Not particularly a lot. A lot of it's from our own experiences, what we see day to day on the wards, and it's surprising how much you talk about medicine considering you do it all day, but I think you're presented with a lot of issues that you need to talk about to get your head round, so to speak.
J Fascinating, yes. Given that a lot of students, yourself included to some extent, were worried about money and so on, in your own experience and that of your friends, did they make much use of the various sources of help available within the University, various counselling services, financial advisors and that sort of thing or not?
K I'm not really sure, it's not the sort of thing that people talk about to be honest, everyone's quite private about their money affairs. Everyone's quite willing to say I've had this many student loans but no one would talk about where they got their weekly money from , how much they got, was it their parents, was it a loan from the bank, no one would share that information, everyone was quite hush hush about that.
J So if somebody went down to the student counselling place?
K I don't think they'd readily bring that up. None of my close friends have said anything like that to me.
J So you don't really have much view as to whether the University is adequately supporting people in their difficulties.
K No I don't, sorry.
J And what about academic support? I mean did you get everything you needed in the way of library provision, computer provision and so on.
K No problems, no problems at all, everything was there at your fingertips. Never any fight for any computers. I think that's becoming more so as more people get computers at home. I haven't had a computer at home so I've always had to go up to the hospital to do any written work but that's not been a problem.
J Super Rachel, is there anything that we haven't talked about that you think we should have done, or anything you'd like to say for the record as it were?
K I don't think so, I can't think of anything off hand.
J Well, you've said some extremely interesting things.
K Have I?
J I'm very grateful, thank you very much indeed.
K No, not at all.
END OF INTERVIEW
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