Editorial

Abstract

It's that time of year when everything goes crazy for those of us involved in universities – its exam time! Oh how I loathe marking exam scripts! Trying to decipher through reams of waffle written in that student-only font of ‘spider handwriting’, looking to see if this student remembered any of the material that you know that you painstakingly delivered only weeks or months before! There are some highlights – like the odd silly answer which brings a smile. This year my favourite was a student who answered a question about differential diagnosis of red eye and started the answer with ‘first of all I would ask the patient if they wore contact lenses, and the patient could answer yes to this question, or the patient may answer no!’ I often ask myself, was I that terrible as a student? (If you knew me as a student then please don’t answer that!) However, the good students make up for their weaker colleagues - this year I was an observer in some viva voce examinations and I was thoroughly impressed at the ability of some students to fire detailed answers back at examiners, or their skill in realising when they didn’t know an answer to a clinical scenario but yet were able to work it out from their amassed knowledge and thinking laterally. When you see the better students coming through you know that our profession will be in safe hands for many years to come - and a well deserved pat on the back for all your educators out there!