The 2nd Annual RUMS Alumni Dinner was held at the start of November. I was invited for the 2nd year in a row (100% of all the dinners ever!) to attend the event and to capture a few snaps of the guests over the course of the evening. It’s always a great pleasure to trip down memory lane with old faces. This was also the first “official” outing for my new lens – something which I’ve been desperate for years to own: Canon’s 70-200mm 2.8 IS II. In relatively low light settings I was able to get some incredible candids with absolute ease. I would also say that my editing skills have improved in the intervening year and together with the new lens the photos came out on a level above compared with year before.  The photos of the 2013 event are available in full to download on my Website and also have been posted over to Facebook on my SEAR Productions page.

Last year’s photos (2012) can be seen here.

The night was enjoyable as always – a tasty meal and the old “so where are you now” cycle with the usual suspects. However compared with the previous year there was a sea change in the body of people that attended. Without meaning to profile based on only two years of running to date on both occasions there was a healthy cohort of “recent leaver doctor” who had graduated the summer just gone. Thus in 2012 the majority of the crowd in attendance were my year with the same holding true for the graduates from the 2013 cohort this year. Two things here: firstly it’s an ideal staging post to meet in November as most people by now have got through the panic of their first ever medical job and are looking to rebuild forgotten bridges between old compatriots. Notwithstanding the the need to rekindle these even more latent friendships into the second year post qualification there was a large dearth of my year returning to this even – realistically reflective of the and the “step-up” that is required for most people in their F2 year with busy rotas involving sets of nights and bridging on call weekend 12-15 day runs and the drift that occurs with these things with the passage of time.

The RUMS Alumni have several contact points online on the UCL Medical school Website as well as a Facebook Group to keep track of various events.