Lecturers

These are the people who are kinda supposed to be teaching you the majority of the things you'll learn on your course. They come in many varieties, some of whom we have already come across.

1- The 'Wait, What?' Guy
You read the notes, you go to the lectures, you nod along. You read through the notes later, and realise that absolutely nothing of what he said made any sense to you at all. You might even be under the impression that said lecturer is amazing and perfect...until you try to learn what he taught you.

2- The 'Look What I Did!' Guy
This guy cares very little about teaching you medicine. In fact, he cares little about teaching you anything apart from all the fascinating experiments he was involved in. It doesn't matter to him that these experiments were conducted on snails, and as a doctor you'll mainly be treating people rather than invertebrates- they were very important, and he was involved. If you're lucky enough, he'll even point out to the entire lecture theatre his hideous choice of clothing via an introductory slide including photographs.

3- The 'Look What Cambridge Did!' Guy
Same as above, but talks incessantly about every major medical advance that occurs in Cambridge. Turns out there are a LOT of them. This is actually pretty much every lecturer you'll have.

4- Professor Awesome
The lecture notes explain everything, but you will still attend his lectures simply because he is amazing. They are informative, without giving you useless detail, while actually being hilarious. This accounts for maybe two lecturers you will have.

5- Professor Nearly-Awesome
His lecture notes are practically perfect. His lectures are clear and easy to follow, he tells you exactly what you need to know at a speed you can keep up with, and even finishes early for lunch "because we've done enough for today" sometimes. But there's something...off. His accent is distracting, or he waves his hands around in a way that makes it almost impossible to take him seriously, he plans ahead for his moments of spontaneity, or he makes jokes that just aren't funny. So near to Professor Awesome, and yet so far.

6- The 'Priorities Wrong' Guy
This guy will spend 20 minutes of the lecture telling you how 9 is less than 20, and then rush through the complicated biochemistry he was meant to be teaching you. On checking the lecture notes, you'll find that he only got through half of what he was meant to in that lecture...the half that made sense to you beforehand.

7- Professor Mumbles
Despite the microphone, this lecturer manages to make half of each sentence inaudible - even to those in the second row. The clue here is enunciation, something they just don't teach any more, it would seem. Sometimes a subset of Professor Nearly-Awesome.

8- The "Hang On, Where In The Notes Exactly Is This?" Guy
You're in your lecture, nodding along, writing stuff in margins, and suddenly you realise that you're running out of room because, quite frankly, the overlap between what's being said and what is written seems mostly to be in the use of conjunctions and the occasional noun, rather than content. This is extremely disorientating. Particularly deadly when combined with Professor Mumbles, above.

9- Professor Rockstar
Has the aging rockstar look about him- vague London accent, slightly mad hair and just the right dress sense. One day you will discover that he is actually in a band, and this will make your day.

More to come as we meet them...
Geraldine xxx