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Becca

Day School, and words of inspiration from facebook!

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I went to the first tutorial of the academic year - a day school which introduced the topics in the first text book for DD210. I am particularly looking forward to block 2, which I am about to move on to (as I'm a little ahead). The block 1 talk was a useful recap of the work I've already done (as I've just finished week 5), and I was able to correct a point about the diagnosis of psychopathy not being self-assessed but rather being a clinical judgement made by a psychiatrist based on Bob Hare's 20 point checklist (I really enjoyed week 4, which was all about psychopathy and autism, can you tell!?).

I have decided not to start TMA01 until I've done the online tutorial for it (saves me getting it wrong and re-writing it after the tutorial!) so I'm just going to continue ahead with the reading and online material for block 2 and come back to TMA01 later smile

On a completely unrelated note, I just read a lovely comment on an OU facebook group and it really resonated with me, so I wanted to record it here:

"I read a book about medical practice early in the Great War. A senior surgeon went to the field hospitals at his own expense to help out. While the younger surgeons rattled through dozens of operations a day, whipping off limbs willy-nilly, this older chap only managed 2 or 3 operations each day.

After some miserable weeks he confessed to his colleagues he would have to return home as he wasn't up to it. He was told "You are doing the cases we don't know how to do and have not the time to attempt. You are saving the men we would leave to die. We cannot let you go."

Even experienced people saving lives feel the way you do in a new environment. If you weren't there, none of your work would be done."

New challenges, new topics, new environments and new people can all be challenging. That isn't bad, the experience isn't unique, and it doesn't mean that you don't belong there. A researcher in one of the week 5 videos put it nicely, that everything you do changes the world, and also your understanding of it. So just keep acting, learning, growing, understanding. And eventually a world that feels alien and intimidating may eventually become a world you feel confident and competent in smile

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