If you’re unfamiliar with Penn’s Day in the Life project, you should familiarize yourself with our previous efforts (here, here, and here). As a concept, it’s one of my favorite things about working here: One day out of the year, the University of Pennsylvania tells its students to go forth and document the day in whatever way they see fit, then submit the resulting photos to be included in a large slideshow by the university itself.
Participation in Day in the Life on our end of things is a little more complicated. Obviously we don’t want folks running around the health system taking photos willy-nilly, as we absolutely need to protect patient privacy — but there are so many interesting, incredible things that happen around here on a day-to-day basis that it’s always a great push for us to document as much of it as we can, which is why our efforts for this project have resulted in hundreds of photos over the past few years.
As this year’s crop of photos started coming together, I began to notice a bit of a theme. There were old spaces I’d walked through for last year’s Day in the Life that I never would again (catch you later, Penn Tower) and new spaces experiencing their very first Day in the Life (hello there, Jordan Center) — a symbolic contrast, I think, that illustrates just how much can change here in such a small span of time. In some ways, this year’s Penn Medicine Day in the Life represents a year in the life, and brings into focus the broad, sweeping waves of institutional progress we might not otherwise take the time to stop and enjoy. In addition, photos we received from Peru highlight the insect-related efforts of our Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics — and remind us that for as big as the health system is, the world is a whole lot bigger.
There are also some things we just thought looked cool.
So without further ado, here it is: A Day in the Life here at Penn Medicine, 2015.