Guest Post: Student Op-Ed

The Oxford Tradition blog is pleased to feature the first Guest Op-Ed from our student journalist, Tatiana Esposito. We will be featuring writing from Tatiana, a student studying Journalism as her minor, a few more times over the rest of the programme.


London:

Buckingham Palace. Big Ben. Topshop. Although Friday morning’s trip to London held the promise of all these things, the activity that most stood out was a visit to the Hunterian Museum. Named after scientist John Hunter, the Hunterian Museum focuses mainly on surgery, both of the past and of the present. It featured shelves laden with ancient bones, half a human face floating in a jar, and syphilis-addled skulls, all of which created a fascinatingly horror movie-like atmosphere. One exhibit featured an array of nightmarish surgical tools of the past, which included rusty saws and a curved, scythe-like knife. The highlight of the museum was watching taped surgeries of everything from a knee replacement to a high-risk removal of a benign brain tumour.

This exhibit, which caters only to a specific audience, was made even more enjoyable by having the opportunity to experience it with my classmates. It is not often that I get to share my interests in medicine with other people who have an equally great passion for it. As we all crowded around the small screen to watch highly trained surgeons burr holes in the patient’s skull, no one winced or looked away in horror, but instead peered closer with excitement as we viewed what our future might hold.

Later on in the trip we left our majors and split off into tour groups. Mine was scheduled to go to the Tate Modern, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Tower of London, but after 40 minutes of fast-paced walking, time constraints limited our viewing time of these great monuments. However, the London excursion was not made great by trips to famous landmarks, but by rare opportunities I would not have had if I had gone to London without the Oxford Tradition. It was both an educationally enhancing experience and one that solidified new friendships within the program.