back to school

i'm sorry, dear blog readership, but with my blogmate out of town (hopefully having the time of her life), not only are you all deprived the the funnier more articulate blog-half, but you're also also stuck listening to the boring, silly ranting that usually gets directed at her in small spurts of email, text, and phone conversation over the course of the day.

with that... what could be better than being a grad student with a real salary?

yesterday i attended the first of a year-long series of lectures entitled, "essentials of patient oriented research," a class designed to fulfill some kind of educational requirement of subspecialty training that might more aptly be titled, "how to be academic 101," or at least "how to fill out forms."

it's hard to describe the atmosphere in a room full of doctors, all fresh out of residency, who finally thought they got to act like grown-ups, but who are instead sent back to the classroom. imagine a group of fairly attractive, trendy-looking young professionals who have spent some number of years enslaved at the hospital, who now have to sign in, take a cookie, and sit still for an hour and half. they take attendance and make you move the front of the class and actually call on people to answer questions. the funny thing is that no one even tries to look like they're taking it seriously. people just sit there giggling, smirking, sleeping, trying to figure out how they can get out of coming to school every week but still get credit. the only word i can think of that describes it is "campy."

as i sat there, trying desperately to stay awake as a very enthusiastic dr. something-or-other gloriously pontificated about ideas and imagination and hypothesis and, yes, the theory of relativity, and i battled my inner demons. do i come to this class every week, in the continued (yet futile) hope that these lectures will actually be interesting and may even restore to me the smart braininess of my youth, or do i do like everyone else and just rig the sign-up sheet? did you say that you'll have cookies every week?

but then i did another survey of the room and was quite surprised to discover that i was filled with hotties. non-wedding-ring-wearing hotties. throw in the cookies and you got a deal!