Tom Bashford (Biochemistry, 1998)
Tom read Biochemistry at Hertford, before completing a graduate-entry programme in Medicine in London. He is a Specialist Registrar in Anaesthesia & Critical Care at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and an Academic Clinical Fellow at the University of Cambridge, with an interest in improving anaesthesia care in low income countries.
I applied to Hertford from a South London technical college, as my struggling (now deceased) comprehensive had lost its sixth form several years previously. This might imply ‘access programme’ success, but as with all caricatures doesn’t paint an accurate picture. I’d always been bewitched by the idea of Oxford as an escape from Tooting. Interviews in December heightened the agony of expectation. It snowed. I was put up in a beautiful room in OB quad. Everyone I met was awesome. I found in the King’s Arms my spiritual and victual home. I was utterly, irrevocably, hooked. The letter that fell through the mat on Christmas Eve was heartstopping.
Of course romanticism is a poor basis for a relationship. Luckily Hertford was, and remains, a fundamentally good place. Academically strong but not overbearing, friendly, irreverent, grounded. It gave me the best of Oxford: lifelong friends, an understanding of what academia looks like when done well, and the confidence that comes from realising that most successful people have no real idea what they are doing. Other pursuits came and went: the obligatory rowing experiment until I realised it’s basically masochism dressed up as a corporate team-building exercise; rugby at a decidedly amateur level; being Welfare Officer; living next to the only pub I have ever walked into to find a huge crowd at the bar only to be nodded at by the barman with “the usual Tom? I’ll bring it over.”
On leaving, with an adequate degree and a clear conviction not to become a biochemist, I worked briefly for the Royal Society before enrolling on a graduate entry course at St George’s Hospital Medical School in London. St George’s is in Tooting: this was disappointing. The course was otherwise ideal, and I left with a much better degree in Medicine than I achieved in Biochemistry. I headed off in the direction of Anaesthesia and Critical Care because it’s terrifying, and I thought that was a good basis for an interesting life.
I’d always been interested in working overseas, and during my junior medical training spent a year with VSO working in Ethiopia. This set the course for the rest of my career which has focussed on how to improve anaesthetic care in low-income countries. I’m academically interested in how complex systems deliver healthcare, and how these systems can be designed or re-engineered to improve that care: I’m now at another university, which is slightly younger and further East than Oxford, pursuing a PhD in Engineering and completing my clinical training. I spend a lot of time working with charities such as Lifebox and Addenbrooke’s Abroad to maintain a programmatic element: academic insight in global anaesthesia is only of use where it’s practical and usable, and actually makes some difference to the 5 billion of the world’s population who lack access to safe, affordable, surgical care.
Hertford is a special place inside a special place. Oxford boasts Prime Ministers and Nobel Prize Winners as alumni, and is currently the world’s best university if you set any store by league tables. Added to this, Hertford has spent the past four decades working to be inclusive and egalitarian without sacrificing academic performance and I think this shows. From their admission of women undergraduates, their history of widening access, even their current focus on portraits of women in Hall, you can see an institution that is working to maintain the best of its traditions while being genuinely progressive.
All advice is bad, and the most joyful thing about future generations is how little heed they pay to those that have gone before. That being said, I make the following observation: my degree has been useful and the thinking Hertford instilled in me has shaped the way I view the world, however my Hertford friends are more important and have influenced me more. If you are deciding between trying to make your essay a little bit better or going for a pint, ponder this. Also, I’ve learned that you never really escape Tooting.