I get to talk to a fair number of groups about my work as a vet: mostly students and school parties, but once in a while an after-dinner speech for one society or another. And, every time I do, it takes me back to my interview to study veterinary medicine at St John’s in Cambridge. The two interviewers sat me down in a comfy chair and one asked me the only question in the whole interview: “Would you like sweet, medium or… or dry sherry?” Well, I really wanted sweet, being just 17, but I knew that the adult thing to ask for was dry, so that’s what I requested.
Dr Green, who was to be my director of studies, poured me out a large glass and one for himself too, from which he took a sizeable gulp. “Tell us about yourself,” he said, so I took a sip – but only a tiny one as I didn’t like it at all – and proceeded to talk about my interests and the things I had done. Eventually the other interviewer, Dr Leake, who was to be my tutor, said, “That’ll be all, thanks” and so I left. I couldn’t have got a place, could I – they didn’t ask me any further questions! Years later I was chatting with Dr Leake and said I remembered my interview. “I remember it,” he said, “we couldn’t bloody shut you up!” But, even so, they gave me a place.
Thinking about interview questions, my son Sam is a computer coder, and he’s recently changed jobs. In his interview for the post, after two hours of hardcore grilling regarding his coding skills, the interviewer asked him if he had any questions. “What part does joy play in your company?” asked Sam. What a question, hey? What part does joy play in your company – in your life?
Yet the challenge is to keep those students feeling joyful too
The glory of teaching at Cambridge (other universities are available!), and the wonder of working in a college like St John’s (other colleges exist, of course!), is the joy I can get simply by walking through our courts, or sitting in chapel and listening to the world’s best choir (other lesser choirs are around for sure!), or supervising stunningly bright students who continually keep me on my toes by asking probing insightful questions. That sounds just perfect, doesn’t it? Yet the challenge is to keep those students feeling joyful too. Right from the start they seem to have problems I never remember having 40 years ago – imposter syndrome, we call it now. They came as the top person in their school, maybe, but now find themselves with everybody else at the same standard, and many may be higher than them. They think: “Should I really be here? Do I deserve to be here – has there been some terrible mistake?”
Our senior tutor gives the freshers a talk on their first day at St John’s. Yes, he tells them, you are amazing, easily intelligent enough. Don’t ever think you don’t deserve to be here. Hmm, I have a feeling that’s the wrong way of approaching the problem. In fact, I think it may compound it. What I ask the vets on their first day in college is what happened when they opened the email that told them the result of their application. Just as an aside – how sad is it to only have it as an email? I remember getting the telegram handed to me just before Christmas telling me I had a place at St John’s – far more exciting than opening an email! But back to the plot. What did you tell people when you got a place? Did you say “I’ve earned a place at university”? Or “I’ve been considered worthy of a place”? No, of course not.
Wherever you went to vet school, you said, “I’ve been given a place!” And if you are given something, what does that make it? A gift! I ask the students what they said when their parents or carers gave them a gift at Christmas. Did they say “I haven’t deserved this” or “I’m not worthy of this gift – there’s been some mistake”? No, of course not – a gift isn’t something you work for or deserve. Rather the opposite.
And, as another quick aside, what really riles me at Christmas is Santa saying, “Have you been good this year, young lady or young lad?” I’d love to hear a child say, “Actually, Father Christmas, I haven’t been particularly good this year – but do you know a gift shows unconditional love, not something I’ve earned by being good? That’s the whole message of Christmas!” I wonder what Santa would say to that! But let’s get back on track. Now, for sure, the students have worked hard for the A levels that get them in, but then lots of people got similar grades, and yet they’ve been given a place.
But for me, I want to know if you are the sort of person that I’d be happy to take my sick cat or my ill budgie to. Will you listen to my concerns, will you empathise with me?
We’ve just interviewed 24 students for four places to read veterinary medicine at St John’s. Some people question the value of interviews – we should surely be making an objective assessment of their academic performance, they say, not something as subjective as a couple of interviewers’ perspectives on a 20-minute chat. But for me, I want to know if you are the sort of person that I’d be happy to take my sick cat or my ill budgie to. Will you listen to my concerns, will you empathise with me? If I were in that situation I really wouldn’t want to know how well you’ve done in your chemistry exams or if you passed your biology practical.
Now, you might wonder how on earth you can know at 17 what someone will be like as a vet 10 years hence. But I think you can have a pretty good idea. There’s a spark of enthusiasm as we cover an area of particular interest, a smile as we share a joke. It worries me that lots of students say they didn’t enjoy their interview – looking back, did you?
Surely the best way of getting the most out of people – and that’s what I want to do – is to make them feel at ease. And surely that goes for teaching too. Grilling someone in small-group teaching so they feel stupid is hardly the best way of teaching, surely? One of the problems we have at Cambridge is that we’ve clearly chosen the best researchers to be lecturers and fellows. Yet many of them can’t understand that students who are not up to their stellar standards can’t quite grasp what they are saying the first time. That’s why I get students in the clinical years to teach those in the lower years – they know the tricky issues in pharmacology or biochemistry, and they can better guide their peers through those areas.
How sad it would be to get a first-class degree and yet a second-class life! Imagine spending all your time in the lecture theatre and library and none on the sports ground or the concert hall or the stage. Get out there and enjoy life!
And although it’s a long time ago – 40 years or so – I can remember having difficulties understanding bits and remembering all the information we were given. I tell my freshers on their first day that many of their supervisors will be telling them to get a first-class degree. That would be utter hypocrisy for me as I only ever got a reasonable 2:1. But what I did get was a first-class life. How sad it would be to get a first-class degree and yet a second-class life! Imagine spending all your time in the lecture theatre and library and none on the sports ground or the concert hall or the stage. Get out there and enjoy life!
My favourite day of the year – and ironically my saddest – is sending our students off into the world to work as vets, and almost as brilliant as that is bringing them back to speak to our students about their work at a dinner I hold for the college veterinary society each term. When I was a preclinical student back in the 1980s I never knew the students in the clinical years, so the moment I became the director of studies I set up a dinner so that all the vet students could meet up and get to know each other. And now I have nearly 30 years of students to call on to come and tell the current students about their work, whether they are a zoo pathologist, an equine vet or a wildlife biologist. How exciting to think I’ve played a part in their lives – and that’s real joy!