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The Siena Society
‘Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire’
Summer Term 2013
Lectures will normally take place on Thursday evenings at 4:15pm in the Drama studio
Pupils and parents are all very welcome to attend.
(Refreshments available)
| Date | Speaker | Event | |
|---|---|---|---|
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25th April | Briony Turner - King's College, London | How many kilometres would you walk for a warm coca-cola in Maasailand, Tanzania? Briony has spent much of her professional time working within the Maasai tribe and her talk promises to be very enlightening. |
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9th May | Dr Kathryn Harkup - The Science of Vampires | Ever wondered if there is more to Dracula than a pale complexion and difficulties shaving? This talk is a spooky tour through the history of vampires with frightening folklore tales, blood sucking bats and sinister scientific stories. |
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20th June | Caz Butcher - Procurement Manager at BskyB | "How I got to be where I am today" Caz is an inspirational young woman who has achieved a high level of success in her career through making the right decisions at school. Some invaluable lessons can be learnt from her. |
Each student from Years 9 to 13 must attend at least two of these lectures. Please book places with your Form Teacher.
SIENA SOCIETY - 20th June 2013
The next meeting of the Siena Society will take place on 20th June.
The speaker will be Caz Butcher, Procurement Manager at BskyB
"How I got to be where I am today"
Caz is an inspirational young woman who has achieved a high level of success in her career through making the right decisions at school. Some invaluable lessons can be learnt from her.
Dr Kathryn Harkup - 9th of May Meeting
On the 9th of May the Siena Society audience got its teeth into a particularly gruesome and fascinating topic- that of vampires! Under the expert guidance of our speaker, Dr Kathryn Harkup, a chemist by trade, we were exposed to the ghoulish history of these blood drinking, photophobic 'creatures' from Bram Stoker's Dracula and Vlad the Impaler through to Mercy Brown.
We knew we were going to be exposed to the idea of blood and things grizzly but few of us expected a Biology lesson on blood and the role of haemoglobin in carrying red blood cells round the body but Dr Harkup got us all up to speed on this fascinating area. The reason soon became clear as we learnt that Mercy Brown may have suffered from a rare blood condition known as pulteria which led to her suffering from a sensitivity to light and made her teeth go red. Clearly we were being led to believe that there may be simple scientific reasons behind so called 'vampires' and I think when we learnt about the effects of the disease rabies our suspicions were confirmed. Fortunately we do not have rabies in this country but the symptoms are known to be horrific: the virus affects the brain in a horrible way, making the patient very aggressive and sensitive to light and to strong tastes (like garlic!). Rabies also makes a sufferer intensely thirsty but drinking water brings on an excruciating gag reflex which then leads to an absolute terror of water….symptoms which all sound rather like they belong to someone dressed in a black cloak with blood dripping from his fangs….
So- it seems that maybe vampirism can be explained simply by diseases after all. Or can it…???
Mr Pearson
Head of Sixth Form
George Bullard Talk
Last term we were entertained by George Bullard who is one of the country's most prominent explorers, currently holding the world record for the longest fully unsupported polar journey ever.
He has been down the Amazon, swum marathons, cycled across Europe. He also works as an ambassador for the Britsh Exploring Society Many girls signed up to become members at the end! This week we had a talk from Briony Turner about her tme in Maasailand.
Matt Dickinson - The Siena Society
Thursday 14 February, 2013
On Thursday 14 February, the renowned explorer and author, Matt Dickinson presented a riveting lecture about an expedition he organised to Antarctica in which he and eight others planned to trace his own father's footsteps from half a century earlier. Matt planned to sail from the southern-most tip of South America, around Cape Horn to Antarctica with the particular aim of climbing the highest mountain down there; a feat his father never sadly accomplished. Matt punctuated his lecture with video clips and some of the images we saw of the voyage across the Southern Ocean in their 60 foot yacht, Pelagia, were truly terrifying! What must have been a particularly poignant moment for Matt was when they came across his father's camp, abandoned 50 years earlier; tins and debris lying undisturbed for all that time. As always with Matt, he passed on much good advice to the girls; this time he recommended that any girl interested in a career in journalism, should find something meaningful to campaign for and then write articles in support. And yes they did manage to climb the highest mountain in Antarctica and sail safely back!
Mr A Pearson
Head of 6th Form
SIENA SOCIETY
JESS SMITH, UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
On Thursday, 24th January, the Siena Society hosted a talk by the University of East Anglia's admission tutor, Jess Smith. The older sister of a girl currently studying GCSEs, Jess was ideally suited to speak to the girls at their level about entry to university.
She gave good advice as to what questions a girl should be asking when researching a degree course and university:
- What is the reputation of the course?
- What are the entry requirements? (An applicant must be realistic about her academic potential)
- What is the content and structure of the course? How is the course taught and assessed?
- Why do you think you would enjoy the course? Do you want to move away from home?
- Do you want a city or campus university?
- Do you want to be part of a large (eg 40,000 students) university or a small one (6000 students)?
- What will the living costs be like? (Accommodation at the UEA ranges from £59 per week for a shared room to £110 per week for a single en-suite room)
- What is there to do nearby the university?
Further excellent advice that Jess offered centred on the 3 key areas university admissions tutors looked for in a student's application:
- Academic ability (evidenced by GCSE and AS results)
- Motivation (evidenced by relevant reading, experience and skills)
- Research- the applicant needs to demonstrate an understanding of what the course will involve.
The earlier the girls at St Catherine's grasp the importance of this advice, the simpler will be their task in Year 12 when they actually have to make the decision as to which course they want to apply for and at which 5 universities they will apply to read it.
Yesterday's Siena Society lecture saw David Rice from Birmingham University also present a talk on university admissions; there will be feedback on this in the next newsletter.
Angus Pearson
Head of Sixth Form
The EU and the UK, better off out?
The EU is constantly in the news, mostly for the wrong reasons, as far as UK citizens are concerned. So I wanted to explore some of the reasons why the EU is where it is today and crucially why the UK may soon reach a crossroads in its relationship with the EU (although nothing ever happens quickly in the EU-we still don’t even have entirely free trade within the bloc).
I tried to take a neo-functionalist approach, in that the European integration becomes accepted and desired by the population, because of its practical effects, starting with economic motives. Further integration can then occur in other areas such as social policy and justice. The problem for us Brits is that we see the EU as a place to trade, to visit and not much else.
The establishment of the Euro has accelerated the need for the EU to bind itself even more closely, or in the words of the EU ‘ever closer integration.’ That means fiscal union, where it will be those (unelected technocrats) in Brussels that decide how much tax individual (elected) governments can raise and where they may spend it. So UK tax revenues could be spent…..well anywhere the EU decides, perhaps on Italian pensions, the Greek education system, the Romanian prison system.
Could the UK survive outside the EU? Or would our partners tolerate us being a semi-detached member, picking and choosing which rules and regulations we are prepared to obey? I think when push comes to shove, we will have to ask ourselves whether we are willing to trade sovereignty for influence. We live in interesting times!
L Casey
subject leader Economics and Business Studies
SIENA SOCIETY - 4th October 2012
On Thursday, 4th October, the Siena Society was treated to an astonishingly thorough and informative talk about the training and working life of a General Practitioner.
Dr Lynch, a mother of a girl at St Catherine’s, not only spoke about the reasons for becoming a doctor: the wide range of careers opportunities and the stimulating and rewarding nature of the work; but she also gave some good reasons why not to become a doctor, including the long hours and stress associated with such a demanding career.
She went on to detail the extensive training required: a 5 Year Medical degree, followed by 2 years as a trainee doctor then either a further 3 years speciality training to become a GP, or 10 years to become a consultant. Quite a commitment!
It was fascinating to hear about Dr Lynch’s own career development: she spent a period in the Endocrinology unit in Bagdad hospital during the Iran-Iraq war, avoiding SCUD missiles, then to Dublin and Sheffield for her GP trainee years before settling in Hanworth which is where she currently practises.
In explaining why she chose to be a GP and not a hospital doctor, Dr Lynch stated: ‘In a GP practice, people stay, diseases come and go. In hospitals, diseases stay but people come and go’. This seemed a particularly neat way of summing up the differences.
Dr Lynch concluded her talk by explaining the highly competitive nature of applying for a Medicine degree: not only will you need a minimum of 3 As at A level, but even then a student’s application has to stand out to beat the mathematical odds of being offered a place at medical school: 3 applicants to 1 place.
The St Catherine’s girls could not have received a more engaging and informative talk about Medicine and life as a doctor. We are very grateful to Dr Lynch for giving up her precious time to come and talk to us.
Angus Pearson
Head of Sixth Form
SIENA SOCIETY - 10th May 2012
On Thursday, 10th May, the Siena Society was treated to a dazzling lecture on the Nature of Colour by Dr Andrew Hanson from the National Physical Laboratory in nearby Teddington.
He introduced his talk by explaining how our eyes interpret colour and that images are created by the way our eyes respond to lights within a spectrum. Our eyes can only perceive a limited spectrum of colours. At one extreme, ultraviolet light would destroy the biology of our eyes and so we are prevented naturally from seeing it. At the other (infra-red) end of the spectrum, the light is simply not powerful enough to excite our eyes into action!
In addressing the question: what are complimentary colours? Andrew illustrated the answer very cleverly. He got us to stare at a union jack made up of Cyan, Yellow and Black. After we had stared at the image for about 30 seconds, the image was removed but to our amazement an image remained etched on our retinas. But the image was in red, blue and white!! It seems that there are 3 ‘additive’ colours: Red, Green and Blue which essentially add light to create a whole range of other colours. (TVs use these 3 colours). The true complimentary, ‘subtractive’ colours which take light away, are Cyan (-Red), Magenta (-Green) and Yellow (-Blue) which are used by artists and ink-jet printers. What was particularly interesting about this was that it would of course be prohibitively expensive for a printer to achieve a pure black from these 3 colours which is why our printers have a 4th colour-‘off’-black.
Andrew Hanson spoke with huge enthusiasm about many other fascinating facts about colour and I would highly recommend a look at a short video of Dr Hanson lecturing on the Craziness of Colour at http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxTeddington-Andrew-Hanson-Co
