It’s been just over two months since I started my placement at the George Marshall Medical Museum and the time has flown by! This year has obviously been very different because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and this has affected the way that work experience can be carried out. I had no idea what to expect when I started this placement, as this was my first time doing any sort of history-related work experience.
At our first (virtual!) meeting, Louise Price, the curator of the museum, introduced me to the museum and we brainstormed ideas for possible projects, like creating resources for schools, transcribing oral interviews, or researching patients from Powick Asylum. Researching patients was the first thing I had a go at, and, as I’ve discussed in my previous blog posts, this is what I’ve been doing for the majority of my placement!
On the first day of my placement, I spent several hours searching for the patients using the Find My Past website, and I immediately knew this was what I wanted my project to be on! In my previous blogs, I’ve talked about the difficulties with using sources like censuses, and birth, marriage, and death records, and the entirety of my time doing this research has been a learning curve. The more I researched, the more interested I was, and the more I was able to create a picture of the patients’ lives. Being able to work on something centred around mental health has been really special for me, and I feel like I’ve really gotten to know some of these people and their lives rather than just seeing them as patient numbers.
I can’t wait for everyone else to get to know them as well as I do, and my summaries of these patients will be on the Medical Museums website, and will be displayed in the museum when it re-opens! Current circumstances have obviously meant that I haven’t been able to visit the museum in person, and I’m incredibly excited to be able to go and see it in person, hopefully soon!
I’ve absolutely loved doing this work experience placement, and I would even say that it’s been my favourite part of my university experience so far! I’ve learned about the way the museum is run, I’ve been able to learn how to work with primary source material, like the museum’s database of patient case notes, and I’ve written blog posts, which is something I’d never done before and has been hugely helpful for me in reflecting over the work that I’ve done! The museum’s database is available to access on the website if you’re interested in learning about the patients, which I highly recommend having a look at! Doing this research has really opened my eyes to what historical research can do, and volunteering with the museum is something that I would absolutely love to do in the future!
It’s been an absolute privilege to be able to do this placement, and I feel very lucky that I have had such a wonderful supervisor to guide me. Louise and I have had weekly meetings which have been extremely helpful for my placement and have become something I look forward to every week, especially with the pandemic meaning that we can’t get out and about to see people as much as we’d like! Mostly I’d like to say a big, big thank you to Louise, who has definitely been one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed this so much!
I’d also like to say thank you to my module supervisor, Elspeth King, for arranging my placement, and for all of her help and guidance with my work experience module!
If you ever get the chance to do a work experience placement with the George Marshall Medical Museum, take it! You’ll definitely love it as much as I have!