| Description | Interview with Mark Gilchrist, MBCHB, recorded on 10 July 2003 by Jennifer Carter.
Transcription :-
JC So greetings Mark. Thank you for coming and talking to me. I gather you are not a local boy, so what brought you to Aberdeen?
MG When I was looking for places to apply to do medicine I did the usual kind of research and looked around at the various courses and the places where they were on offer and selected the five I wished to apply to. The exact reasons or a combination of reasons I have long since forgotten!
JC Something to do with your grades, something to do with perhaps the new medical curriculum, which was still fairly uncommon at the time you were applying, was it not?
MG Most universities were undergoing a lot of change in their medical curriculum. Aberdeen seemed to have a course that I thought I would enjoy and get along with, a lot didn't. I thought Aberdeen would be a place I would enjoy living in and that side of it, I think, was the greater influence. I think I wanted to be somewhere that I thought I would enjoy, rather than the academic side of it.
JC We were, I think, relatively early in getting the new curriculum going. I think it was Aberdeen and Dundee in Scotland, which were the two first medical schools to do this. Probably by the time you were applying, it was not quite past history, but you were looking at a sort of settled programme, not one that was undergoing radical change.
MG Even since I have been here I have noticed in the years that have followed there has been a lot of improvements as the programmes have evolved and they have sorted out the teething difficulties with the new ways of teaching in medicine and I think now it is a very settled, very good programme.
JC Good. You have enjoyed it. You have found it satisfactory. Did you by the way, take an intercalated degree?
MG No.
JC You have done a straight 5 years and you feel relatively confident now that you have got the basis for a future career in medicine, whatever direction you choose to go.
MG I think I am where I should be for this stage.
JC Well that is a cautious and sensible statement, but a great compliment to your teachers actually. Looking back on these 5 years are there particular people who have influenced you, either among your colleagues or among the teaching staff, whom you would like to mention and why? Outstanding teachers, or perhaps bad bits in the course, or bits that were particularly helpful in the sense of perhaps you did electives or periods of residence in places like Inverness? I don't know.
MG There's an awful lot to cover there.
JC Right, I will shut up and let you get a word in.
MG I think it is difficult to pinpoint any one individual. There have been so many times over the five years, particularly over the last three years, during my clinical teaching, where different individuals, their teaching has given you a different perspective on a given subject. Sometimes the way an individual puts things, just makes things click or giving you a new enthusiasm or understanding for a subject you might not have cared particularly much for prior to that. However, the nature of the course and the way in which we are always moving on very quickly, particularly 4th year where we spent only one week in the given speciality, you don't spend so much with any given individual, so it's difficult to be influenced to any great degree by any one individual. I am sure that has its merits, but it also has some disadvantages. So there have been a lot of one-off moments of inspiration, I guess, like I say it is difficult to pin-point any one individual who has had that significant an influence. It has been a collective thing over a time.
JC And it has worked well?
MG I think experiences of going away to other places that the course, not only gives, but sometimes demands, has been tremendously beneficial.
JC What did you do yourself?
MG For my elective I went to St. Kitts and that was a tremendous experience. I had an incredible time there, both from the academic point of view and also the other more relaxed aspects of it.
JC The beaches and all that!
MG Yes. It was a tremendous experience all round and I think the electives are a wonderful idea. Also in Scotland I have spent time in Inverness, Elgin, a GP placement in Keith and I found those to be probably the most rewarding times. You get a little bit more of one to one teaching and people get to know you a bit better, because there are less people.
JC Sure there is less in small hospitals and in GP practices.
MG They were excellent times and you just get to see somewhere else and explore that particular area and get involved with whatever is going on in those places. Excellent times there.
JC One of the things that strikes me in listening to people describing the current course in medicine is that there must be quite a high, and (query) worrying element of personal choice in choosing what you are going to do at this or that stage. Do you find that so or did you relish that?
MG I think it is good that we get the choice. The choice is within set limits, so you should get enough relevant, generic experience in the larger areas. We tend not to be able to choose too specialized subjects and I think being able to choose something you are interested in, within the given larger areas of say medicine and surgery, is very beneficial. I think being stuck in a field that you have no interest in, would be very detrimental. I think you would take a lot less away from that in terms of the specialist knowledge that you would get from that, which is a nice bonus, as well as the more generic knowledge that they really want you to get from that.
JC Interesting, good. So you obviously, at times exaggerated, say rose to the challenge, but you obviously enjoyed the element of personal choice within the course.
MG Yes. I was also very lucky in getting my first choices.
JC Not so good, making the choices and not getting the first one!
MG All the way through, I think I have gotten my first or second choice, usually the first. It is things I have been very interested in and very keen to do, so my experience of that has been extremely positive and I have thoroughly enjoyed the things I have done and the choice. I think to have been able to do those things that I wanted to do I think was a real plus.
JC That is interesting. Good. After tomorrow, have you decided which direction you career is going to take? Have you decided to stay in Aberdeen or move on somewhere else for your houseman-ship?
MG My first house job is in Glasgow, at the Western Infirmary there, a general medical post, and in February I come back to Aberdeen's Royal Infirmary to do my surgical post. And from there I really don't know.
JC You don't know yet if you are going to be a hospital doctor or a GP?
MG Oh, I think I will be a hospital doctor, but exactly what, I don't know yet.
JC Great. Okay, leaving the academic for the moment and switching in a different direction, you said in the beginning that you, you know, you were influenced almost more than by academic choice, by the idea of coming to Aberdeen as somewhere you would want to live. So I would be interested to explore that a little, because I think you come from Nottingham, and I wondered how much you knew about Aberdeen and why it was that you thought it was a place that you would enjoy.
MG Actually, I must confess I knew very little. I had never been to Aberdeen, prior to arriving in Fresher's Week.
JC So you hadn't made a pre-visit?
MG No. It is an awfully long way to travel! I looked in the various university prospectuses, I think I probably looked in all of them that were offering medicine and some of the general information about the university and the city, I took into account. When I had ruled some places out on that basis. Speaking to other people, teachers at school, parents, friends of the family, people who had been to the different cities and had experience. Everybody that I spoke to had nothing but positive things to say about Aberdeen.
JC Interesting. So you had quite a wide range of references there?
MG I think I took a lot from what people said of their own experience and as I say everybody was very positive about Aberdeen and that was definitely a big factor and from what I knew about Aberdeen, I liked the idea of living by the sea! But also to have things, like ski-ing and hill-walking within relatively close range. I had never skied before and I decided that when I went to university I was going to take up something new, just for a change, and I decided that would be the thing I would do if I came to Aberdeen. So ..
JC The only university in the UK where ski-ing is easy!
MG Pretty much!
JC Sometimes, when it's not too warm! I suppose Nottingham and Aberdeen are a bit alike in a way, I mean, they are cities of comparable size and both with relatively easy access to beautiful countryside for walking, you know, if hill walking is one of your things. You can presumably go to the Peak District at home, or to the Grampians from here. Well that's good and I am glad it has worked out well, because it is a terrible risk, isn't it, coming to live for 5 years in a city that you don't know at all. So thinking back to that first day when you set foot in Aberdeen, you came up in Freshers Week in September 5 years ago, can you remember anything about your initial impressions and you know, how things panned out for you? I mean where you lived for example.
MG Initial impressions, it was.. . I can remember, I can't describe it very well, but you can come over a small hill and you see a lot of the city just as you are about come across the Dee and it was a beautiful sunny day, much like today. That always helps! Just to give you a favourable first impression.
JC You came by car did you?
MG Yes.
JC By yourself, or with parents?
MG My parents.
JC They drove you up with all your kit?
MG Yes, so I remember arriving initially to my aunt's house then to Hillhead. I just remember seeing a lot of parks and trees and just being a fairly green city. I remember going past the Victoria and Westburn Park and it just seemed a very pleasant city.
JC An aunt popped in there suddenly. Do you mean to say that you have an Aberdeen based aunt?
MG Yes.
JC So you weren't coming to a totally strange city, at least you had a relative.
MG I knew her very well before coming to Aberdeen, but I had never been to Aberdeen to visit her.
JC So you passed by the auntie and went on to Hillhead. You were there for 1 year or more?
MG Yes, just the one year.
JC Which bit of Hillhead?
MG In the catered halls, in Fyfe House.
JC And how did that work out for you?
MG I would thoroughly recommend every first year going to university lives in halls. I think the catered halls are better, you kind of have more neighbours and the communal mealtimes are also a great time to get together and chat and you get exposed to so many different people, doing so many different things. One of the problems with medicine I am afraid is that it is quite insular and we spend all our time together with each other and it was quite nice to mingle with everybody else. Other students do classes with different people and meet a whole bunch of different people all the time so that is our big opportunity to do that.
JC And did it work. Have you carried forward friends from 1st year?
MG Unfortunately not. I just kind of spent more and more time with the people on my course and kind of drifted away.
JC As you say, it is one of the dangers of the medical ghetto. It is so important for doctors to be able to talk to ordinary people. It is a pity one can't retain more outside links. But historically there was a time, even when I first came here, when medical students dominated student life, you know, they were always the President of the SRC and people in the student show and things. But of course, now you are too busy, that's the problem! But sorry I was diverting there. So, one year in Hillhead and where did you go on to?
MG I moved in with four friends, all of whom were in Fyfe House. We all moved in to a flat in Rosemount.
JC The others were all medics?
MG Three were and one wasn't, and one of those three is no longer a medic. He went on to do a biochemistry degree.
JC So some links with the outside world then. Was that your permanent residence ?
MG No, that fell apart very quickly! We saw out the year together and I think, it was a fairly grotty flat, and it was not the ideal five to live together. There was conflict between certain members of the flat and it plainly wasn't going to work out for another year, but it was an experience. The I moved out of there and went to a flat near the city centre, with one of the five I had been living with then and another friend of ours. Was there for another two years and that also didn't work out!
JC You are not the luckiest person, are you?
MG Maybe there is a pattern there, and the three of us ended going our separate ways. Though we are still good friends and still in touch and that's great, but living together the three of us didn't necessarily make the best combination to live together. Then for this year I was living in a flat nearer the beach, with a girl from my class and that worked brilliantly. I wish I had that arrangement from the beginning. That was a tremendous experience.
JC Was it a problem finding accommodation year on year or was it relatively easy? Was it grapevine stuff or through the accommodation bureau or what?
MG The accommodation bureau I only tried that in second year. They didn't really have much to offer.
JC So you relied on newspapers or student grapevine?
MG Newspapers. Wandering round the letting agents. It was a problem finding a place for five, but we kind of jumped at the first place that could house us all. I think that was probably a mistake. I think we should have probably have held off. After that, my friend, one of my flat mates actually bought a place, so he asked me if I wanted to move in when he did that, but when that kind of didn't work out another friend, her flatmate was moving out at the end of 4th year, and she knew that I wasn't happy where I was and was looking for somewhere else. She said that she would have a room and if I would like to move in ..
JC This is the one by the beach?
MG Yes.
JC That was quite a step up to Foresterhill.
MG It was a good, long walk. It was a good 30 - 35 minutes.
JC You walked it everyday, did you?
MG Yes
JC Good for you. 45 minutes uphill?
MG A brisk walk, 30 - 35 minutes.
JC Talking about accommodation leads one naturally on to ask about finance. I mean, has it been a struggle for you financially or have you been relatively comfortable? You know, you hear so much about student poverty and blah, blah, I wondered how your experience had been.
MG I have always tended to be quite comfortable. My parents have helped out a lot. I have also taken out loans. I have taken out student loans, for four of the five years. That was a decision… I have acquired a significant amount of debt… that was .. I did that in order that I could enjoy myself basically while I was here. I felt that I would rather acquire that debt, which I was anticipating employment and the ability to pay it off, so I felt that acquiring even a fairly significant amount of debt to enjoy a good standard of living and to enjoy myself, instead of being constantly worried about the pence. I felt that was a better way to spend my five years here.
JC What figure are we talking about, roughly?
MG I think we are talking somewhere between thirteen and fifteen thousand.
JC Which for a medic isn't as much as it might have been actually.
MG I know a fair few that are a lot more than that, even up to thirty thousand, I think. As you say finance has been something which has been very topical and we were the first year for tuition fees to be introduced and then the abolition of grants as well that year, but the tuition fees thing was something .. I can understand the reasons for it. I think, at the time I remember hearing a prominent government figure claiming adding in tuition fees would not make going to university any more expensive. Quite how an additional £1,000 was not going to increase the cost or increase debt, I am not sure and how the maths of that would work out.
JC Did you, during your time as a student, I mean, did you find that finance and financial problems and so on were something people talked about a lot. Were you aware of colleagues perhaps struggling more than you were, or was it just something everybody took for granted. I am trying to get the feel of it right.
MG It tended to be a periodic thing. Once you got to the end of any given year most of us started to run a bit short and you would get more and more people say that they couldn't go out or they couldn't really do something, as they didn't have any money at that moment. As you get to the period before the next loan cheque comes in that would be a little bit tighter as well. But for the most part, most people seemed to be coping okay. I think medical students do have it a lot harder
than most others and my friends from back home all have three-year degrees and they are also able to work during their summers and …
JC Which I imagine you couldn't at all or very little?
MG Two summers I did work and term-times I managed that in second year and the first term of third year and then it just had to stop.
JC What sort of jobs did you take?
MG I worked in a clothes store for one summer. Did removals the following summer. That was physical. It was incredible! I worked, ate and slept that summer.
JC In the van!
MG Not quite. I enjoyed it tremendously. It was just very different, great camaraderie. You were always working with people and you had to pull together just to get the job done and because it was such hard work, at the end of the day we were just ready to kick back and relax. Then I took a bar job here in Aberdeen. I really enjoyed that, because, as we were saying earlier about getting experience outside of medicine, as it is too easy to become too involved in medicine. You are there all day and the people are the ones you are out with at weekend and evenings, playing sports with and so on. So that was a diversion and it was good to have friends with other interests outside medicine. I was unhappy to have to give that up in the end.
JC It was just pressure of time again, I would imagine?
MG Yes, yes.
JC So you have done a lot of things at university. You have mentioned ski-ing and bar work, what other extra mural activities have you been involved in?
MG The other thing I took up in second year, I started playing squash.
JC A wonderful game. I used to play it.
MG I tremendously enjoyed that as well and I carried on playing football as I did from before I came to university, played for the Medical School a few times and just played games with friends.
JC So your social networks, if I can just recap, were basically medicine, plus the people you lived with, plus the sports that you did, and to a very small extend the outside work. Okay, turning away a bit from yourself, Mark, I am thinking now more generally of a student experience in the time you have been here. Can I ask you how some things about how things in the University worked. For example did you find adequate support in things like Library, Computing and stuff like that? Was that all okay?
MG I have had experience with a number of different libraries, here and in peripheral sites. At Foresterhill Library, superb and its always there and you always get the support you need and if there is something you need that isn't there they will work for you and try and help you. I haven't spent so much time in the Queen Mother Library, but I found that a confusing place when I had to look for other things, but I think that was just my lack of experience of that particular library. For one of the modules I had to do, one of our special study modules, and I ended up having to go to the Law Library having to get some things out of there, and that was a bewildering place! But, the staff there were particularly helpful. I just approached them and said "I am looking for information on this and I am a medical student, so I really don't know what I am doing here!" And they were like "Okay, what is it you are looking, for? Just you sit yourself down here" and they brought the books to me.
JC And on the computing side, everything you needed. No problems?
MG Yes, just so reliant on them now I guess and use them for so many things. A part of every day life. I can't recall any great problems with computers.
JC Were you into email before you came up to university?
MG No.
JC So you started here. And similarly, did you have a mobile phone during all your time .. perhaps not, as medics can't use them in the hospital.
MG I got a mobile phone in 3rd year, it would have been. I used to find people and their use of mobile phones to be quite irritating, prior to having one myself, since then I am unsure how I got along without it!
JC But that has been quite a big change in student life. Everybody has told me how virtually all their social contacts are mediated by the mobile phone and or by email. That is certainly something that would have applied, perhaps a little less at the beginning of your time, but is now absolutely universal.
MG I think what it has done has been making plans, it tends to be more making plans for a night out or something, it tends to make things a lot more fluid than if there was a general agreement….
End of side one of tape
Start of Side two
JC Right, this is side 2 of the tape and Mark was just explaining how mobile phones made social life, in some ways, easier, but in some ways less exact, because people don't necessarily turn up for appointments on time.
MG And if you didn't, you may well miss the group, but people do tend to come along at different times of the night now and just come when they are ready. It tends to mean that you end up in bigger groups because different people phone different people at different points in the night and everybody kind of flocks together.
JC How interesting, I had not heard that observation before.
MG Kind of widens the net.
JC And other university services, I mean, I don't know if you have crossed any their doorways and have any comments at all. We have got what, Student Health, Chaplaincy Centre, Counselling, any of them feature in your life at all?
MG From the list that you mention, and certainly from my recollection, it would be Student Health. The only problem with Student Health is getting an appointment with them.
JC A lot of pressure on them, I understand.
MG And also, people doing medicine, our timetable is somewhat busier than many students, tending to coincide with the hours when Student Health is open.
JC And you have to get from there to here, so not as convenient for you as for many other students. Any of the other services figured in your life at all?
MG No.
JC What about catering, I mean, I have heard a lot of medics groaning about food at Foresterhill!
MG There are good days and there are bad days!
JC Is this University provided food, or is it …
MG No this is the staff canteens, which I used. Yes, there are good days and there are bad days.
JC And of course there is nowhere else to go to up there, you either eat what's there or you don't eat. Thinking again, rather generally, Mark, you have had 5 years and I don't know if you can reflect on any general trends in the patterns of student experience during your time. I mean issues come and go, don't they, but certain things are said of students generally which may or not be true in your experience. For instance it is said that students are very a-political and apathetic, and it is said that students drink too much. It is said that students are much too promiscuous. I mean these sort of generalisations I don't know if any of them ring a bell of you as being of interest and things which in your experience which you would like to challenge or agree with.
MG The a-political side of it. It is something I have certainly heard comment on in newspapers and student newspapers as well and I for one have never been involved in any demonstrations or protests and after 1st year I stopped voting in student elections.
JC Why was that, because you thought it was pointless?
MG Yes. I can't think of anything, apart from thinking the student elections were rather pointless, I never noticed any difference from year to year. I don't know what these people did. Maybe that is to their credit but it didn't seem to make a difference and I didn't know enough about the people, or what they stood for, or what it was they were meant to be doing and I wasn't inclined to make the effort to find out. As for the bigger picture, there hasn't been anything … it's a combination of there not really being anything I felt compelled to go and demonstrate about and also the feeling that it simply would not make any difference. I know there fairly significant protests about tuition fees and I don't know if that has had any impact, but there has been changes on that front. Great protests that the students got involved in on the war in Iraq, but I am fairly certain that that made no difference.
JC And I imagine no medical students would have been involved. You would have been too busy.
MG As far as I am aware I don't know of any.
JC Did you discuss it amongst colleagues at any time?
MG Yes, we would discuss it.
JC You would talk about, so you were interested at least to the level of discussing it.
MG Yes, it just seemed to be something that was remote and beyond our sphere of influence.
JC What about the other stereotypes the other "aunt Sallys". We constantly read that students spend too much money on drink and so on. I mean looking around, and I am not talking about you, was this something you would agree with?
MG I think, within the UK there is a drinking culture from what I understand, from what you read and from what you hear from speaking to people outside the UK. It is far more significant than in many other countries in the world and most social occasions tend to revolve around drink and I think students do drink a lot.
JC First year in Hillhead for example, were you bothered by a lot of drunken parties and people staggering back noisily at night.
MG Well if wasn't somebody else, it was me!
JC So should one see it as very much a first year sort of thing, almost a rite of passage?
MG When we get all nostalgic and we are sitting talking about the past, we all tend to comment on how much we used to drink in first year and the fact that we could really not manage that now! But, definitely first year, a lot more than subsequently.
JC What about drugs? Obviously as a medic you would stay clear, but did you see much evidence?
MG You could wonder into certain flats at Hillhead, there was one I particularly remember, going to see a friend, his three flat mates. He lived in the self-catering accommodation, his three flat mates, I think, spent very little time doing anything other than smoking cannabis and there was always this haze in the flat and as soon as you opened the door you were aware of the smell. I think wandering through Halls you did occasionally catch the smell of cannabis and such and it was not an infrequent occurrence, but as to anything beyond that I am not actually aware within the student population, at that time.
JC Because it has become a much more serious problem in Aberdeen as a city over the period you have been here, about the last 5 years, hasn't it, and I wondered to what extent that had got through to the student community.
MG I presume you are talking about the harder drugs, the heroin and now crack cocaine's starting to ..
JC And the amount of drug-related crime which apparently we have in Aberdeen, which is relatively new, as of the past 3 to 5 years.
MG Those particular drugs, I am not aware of it having filtered through to the student population.
JC What about the canard about constant promiscuity? Is that something you observed?
MG About ?
JC Constant promiscuity, if that isn't a contradiction. Was there a lot of sort of sleeping around and this sort of thing? Again, can one generalise? It is just the sort of libles that are thrown out against students. It is quite interesting about how personal experience of what you observe confirms or denies then.
MG It was a very individual thing. There were a great many people, and perhaps more than I expected with strong religious beliefs..
JC That's interesting
MG I don't know if this is a university thing or something to do with the geographical location, but I encountered a lot more people with strong religious beliefs for whom celibacy was the way and similarly …
JC No sex before marriage ..
MG Yes, celibacy might not be the correct way of describing that, and similarly at the opposite end of the spectrum there were people, you know, a different partner, as often as they could find one! And there was all points inbetween.
JC So no general pattern.
MG I wouldn't say it is a problem. I think it is young people doing what young people do.
JC I am very interested by your remark about the number, or your surprise, at the number of people who had overt religious beliefs. This contrasting with your home environment and your school days and making a geographical contrast, or is it a change over time that more young people are coming to some kind of religion.
MG I went to a church school and I don't have any particularly strong religious beliefs at all myself, however having come from a church school where you would perhaps expect more people to have strong beliefs, I think it was actually the strength of the beliefs and the impact that that had on peoples live styles that struck me here as much as anything and various groups that were trying to encourage people to join the different Christian groups that there are and I think it is just a bit more prominent.
JC Very interesting. Are there any other observations, either personal or general that you think we ought to read into the record. Things that I haven't brought up with you that you may have wished to talk about?
MG I can't really think of anything.
JC So nothing comes to mind? So we have covered most of it.
MG The only thing I can think of.. I believe Mitchell Hall is staying with the University ..
JC Where you will be graduating tomorrow
MG I just thought it would be a tremendous shame if we lost all of Marischal College. We obviously spent a significant part of first year there and I don't know if you can describe it, it is a beautiful building. Certainly unique and something that should be maintained and Mitchell Hall is something the University has to hang on to.
JC Despite the huge costs of Marischal College. You did anatomy, presumably, at Marischal College, is it still taught there or has it moved up to Foresterhill?
MG It is still at Marischal College as far as I am aware. Yes. I think there are plans to move it but that is part of a wider scheme of changes that will take many years.
JC And also I think the rules about what you do with human remains are quite strict from the Home Office, no, they would be breathing down our necks if it was the Home Office, no it would be the Scottish Executive. Okay then Mark, anything else at all apart from that very interesting final comment about Marischal.
MG I can't think of anything.
JC Well it has been very enjoyable and interesting talking to you and thank you very much indeed.
MG Thank you.
End of Transcript
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