SSM

You may ask what the hell the use is to know what’s happening at Ukraine.

I must say I have no idea. In fact, while writing the blog about Black Sea and Gazprom, I had a short meeting with some of our first year medical students, and was posed with the same question.

The story goes like this: Towards the end of their academic year, our junior medical student have to do a small project (we call it “special study module”). I am one of the supervisors on the list, and the topic that I always put up in the past 10 or 12 years is Why can birds fly?

Seriously my original idea is something about comparative anatomy. Nonetheless, I didn’t have to worry very much about my idea because the topic remained idle for many years and, until recently, nobody seems to have any interest in flying creatures.

And, now, the topic is chosen by some students. (They may not be all that interested in birds or anatomy; the faculty is apparently running out of topic.) When I arranged a small meeting with them at the beginning of the project and told them what I expected, one of them asked, “What is the use of learning birds?”

I was dumbfounded.