The Good Ol’ Days

We’ve all heard the phrase – whenever Alumni come back for any manner of BLSA event/Sports fixture/Society talk, you’ll hear various manner of stories about how much better it was ‘back in their day’. People worked harder, partied harder, and were just that bit better at everything from Sports to Drama to drinking. It’s incessant, and it’s become something of a joke amongst the students about how often we hear about this strange land before time. So, as Alumni event season is just around the corner, I thought why not explore if there is any truth behind the phrase ‘The Good Old Days’, or if rose tinted glasses are getting in the way.

1:0

Present – Students from all backgrounds.

Any of you that have had the pleasure of talking to Dame Parveen Kumar, she’d revel in showing you the photo of her graduating class from the 60’s. It’s a great photo, and essentially shows about 50 white men in white shirts, and Professor Dame Kumar as the only woman and the only Person of Colour right in the middle. By comparison, look at where we are now - over half of our students at Barts and The London are non-white, and our communities are far more in­clusive. Our faith and cultural societies make stu­dents from every background feel at home, and the BLSA has a far greater emphasis on non-al­coholic spaces and events. That’s not even starting on the differences in backgrounds amongst our students – more stu­dents than ever have come from state education, are from non-medical households, and have grown up in severely under represented parts of the country. It’s hard to think that only a few decades ago the University was likely quite a difficult place to be if you were not white, cis, middle/upper class, and didn’t drink alcohol.

1:1

Past – Cooked in Batches

Let’s face the music, student numbers are increas­ing. There’s now just over 400 students per year on average in MBBS, about 90 in BDS, and the Allied Courses are also increasing year on year. By comparison, 20 years ago the class sizes were at least 2-3 times smaller, with the same hospital and GP allocations that we have today. Given all of that, you have to imagine a much more individualised experience even just a few years back, both with their hospital placements and their central teaching. Quite often I feel a bit like a spare part knowing I’m one of over 400 Year 4s, so it would be a dream come true if I only had to compete with 4 students on a ward instead of the usual 6-8.

2:1

Present – Spoilt for Choice

In the 20 th Century, we had some fiercely com­petitive sports and some fantastically active soci­eties, but you didn’t exactly have your pick of the litter. Sure, the Rugby club was going strong, and the Drama society were putting on some cracking performances (or so I’ve been told), but the truth of the matter was that if you didn’t row, kick, tack­le, sing or perform, there was very little in the way of organised BLSA societies! This is of course a massive oversimplification, but the truth of the matter is that with over 150 Sports, Societies, and Volunteering groups at BL, with that number increasing every year, I think we’ll tally that as 2-1 for the Present students.

2:2

Past – Money, money, money

It’s often hard for us to imagine a world where all Medical Students got their degrees via Maintenance and Tuition Grants rather than loans, and that education before the 21st Cen­tury was effectively free. Nowadays, students re­ally can’t catch a break financially - between an un-payable level of student loans racking up from student finance, and an NHS Bursary that puts Pennies to the Pound of what it costs to live in London, there is seemingly no government sys­tem looking out for us healthcare students now. That’s a pretty easy win for Past Students if you ask me, and the £80 000 sitting in my Student Finance England repayment plan would probably agree too.

So, we’ve come to a completely inconclusive and wholly useless 2-2 draw. In reality, it’s actually a very nuanced discussion that many clubs will have over a glass of wine (or more) at their dinners, and no doubt come to an entirely different conclusion than I did. At the end of the day, these are just my opinions and I expect many of you will disagree. I think we live in a cracking institution that has had so much history, and it’s perfectly okay to be nostalgic, as long as you can appreciate all that we do really well today. But who knows, maybe in 20 years we’ll be coming back and telling everyone that we had it best. I know I probably will be.