In Which Poor Decisions are Remedied

Just in case you were sitting on the edge of your seats (I can hear that creaking,) or heard bits and pieces of the story (the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.)

I've always wanted to ride to the ER in an ambulance.

Let's overlook the glaring obvious (ambulance ride = bad sign) and just be honest, doesn't it look like fun? The flashing lights, the sirens, getting where you need to go in record time. And it makes a better start to any story than sitting in the urgent care waiting room bundled in sweatpants, slightly delirious, and shaking with fever like a Chihuahua.Which, indecently, is what I was doing two days after my previous post.

The doctor declared my incision site "beautiful" (the first of many to do so that day) and gawked at my medical chart.

"Your PT is 4.2!" (Normal is around 1.5)

Shake, shudder "Yes."

"You don't have any clotting factor."

"No." Pathetic whimper.

And then he scurried out of the door as fast as someone can who doesn't want his patient to worry. If I'd been more coherent, I might have worried. As it was, I was too busy trying to figure out how to recline the exam bed so I could go to sleep.

"So I called my colleagues at St. Jo's, and I want you to go straight to their ER."

"Zzzzzarhgd...whaa?"

He looked me up and down a few times. I probably didn't look like the kind of person who could be trusted to find their way out of an empty paper sack, let alone through the city to a hospital.

"Do you have someone to drive you?"

I wasn't much better by the time we reached the ER. Somehow I think the nurses are used to that.

"So how long has your leg been hurting?"

"Um, days? Since Thurs... no, Monday... um, what day is today?"

"What medications are you on?"

"Keflex? No, that's not right. It's an antibiotic. And it's a cycline. And it starts with a C. Oh wait, doxycycline."

"Are you sure?"

"Perhaps."

At one point I think there were three doctors and nurses in there, starting an IV, taking blood, and trying to drag a patient history out of a delirious patient. Eventually they shot me full of Dilaudid, which is very happy stuff, and wheeled me upstairs to the ultrasound technician. She was very friendly and very chatty, to a point.

"So here's your femoral vein. It looks great. I'm going to push on your knee and check your popliteal veins. Those are good. Hear that rushing sound? That's excellent. Now I'm going to move into your calf. Does it hurt if I press here? Oh, sorry, I guess that's painful. Could you get back on to the bed for me? Let's try that one more time."

Awkward silence.

"So how does it look?"

"Okay."

"You keep going over the same place."

"Just trying to get a clear picture."

The less any medical professional talks, the more you should be concerned.

I owe my doctor cookies for not diagnosing me as a blood clot. Instead I bled out into my leg right near the incision site. I guess that clotting factor's important. Who knew? I wound up spending the night getting IV antibiotics in the observation ward. Because I wasn't drunk or a psych patient they even generously let me have a room with a real door!

So, thanks all of you who expressed deep concern about my imminent demise, but I am back on both feet, and hematoma free. Which is particularly good, because I have some cookies to bake.

In Which Poor Decisions are Made

Welcome back readers, gentle and otherwise.

Unfortunately, I don't yet have any tales from the front of the class to share with you. The Denver and Boulder MCAT sessions should start next week, and with them plenty of questions I can't answer. Until then, I figured we may as well catch up.

I have spent the last two weeks on bed rest recovering from a minor surgical procedure (gastroc slide, for all you med types.) This is not my first procedure, so I knew exactly what to expect: the percocet, the doing nothing all day, the tripping over your crutches and falling on your face. After two days of those horrible crutches I forsook all dignity and honor, gave up, and spent the rest of the two weeks crawling through the house. You do what you have to do, and no one ever fell on their face when they were on their hands and knees.

As far as doing nothing goes, I gave iTunes U a run for their money. It started fairly simply: a music course here, a few lectures on Shakespeare there, one class on Ancient Rome, one on Ancient Greece. It got out of hand very quickly. C.S. Lewis and Geography and French and Ancient Israel and Biochemistry and Art History, and Neuro! I probably could have obtained a second degree, albeit a rather eclectic one, with all those classes.

I didn't know it was that easy to fill a hard drive.

So I spent two weeks crocheting, listening to someone in Australia talk about Romulus, and convincing the dog to let me have part of the bed. No horrible complications, no midnight visits to the ER like last time. The PA who took out my stitches said my leg looked great, go home and start walking on it! So I did.

I don't like that walking boot. Put a 3 inch heel on your left foot. Leave your right foot bare. Come back in an hour and tell me if your hips and back hurt. I thought so.

It was so bad that after the first day I chucked the boot with gusto, tied on my sturdiest shoes, and went outside. It was glorious. The weather was beautiful, I played with the dog and the horse, took care of the chickens, cleaned my birds' cages, and watched the leaves fall. That evening I ran outside to see flocks and flocks of sandhill cranes go trumpeting over the house. It was wonderful, it was liberating, I was just as free as them! /inspirationalbackgroundmusic

The next morning I bounced out of bed, ready to do it all over.

Dear sweet holy everloving mother of...!

I'm told that doctors and nurses make the worst patients. If so, I am well on my way to becoming one. I could barely stand, let alone walk. Who'd have thought that stupid boot served any purpose? So here we are again, back to square one. I've spent the past two days with my foot in the air (and the boot on, thankyouverymuch,) and nothing but iTunes U for company. I think it's getting better, but I'm a little nervous that it won't be all the way there before class starts.

Until then, I have learned my lesson, and will not be leaving my bed without that stupid boot, even though it feels like my foot is encased in concrete, and reminds me of Jimmy Hoffa.

Fin

And here shall be an end.

When I was 15 I flew to Kentucky with my FFA chapter (oh yes, I rocked the blue corduroy) for national convention. As I stood, groggy in the Atlanta airport, watching my advisor try to locate out connecting flight, a random woman darted out of the passing swarm and hugged me.

"You're Cherry Weber's daughter, aren't you?!"

Dear God in heaven, what just happened to me?!

"Um... perhaps?"

She wound up being an old friend of my mother's, and how she recognized me I have no idea. But to this day my mother laughs about my ability to find random people in a crowd. Whenever I step into an airport south of the Mason-Dixon line I keep waiting for someone I've never met to run up to me out of the crowd. I sat at gate J8 in Miami International keeping an eye out for excited strangers.

Princeton Review flew me back to Miami for two students. I had half a mind to tell them that when they showed up at my last class yesterday.

You have no idea how much my supervisors must love you.

To be honest, I didn't think anyone would show up, and I'd wind up entertaining myself in an empty classroom for three hours. My attendance slackened off considerably in the last three or so classes. School started again. People moved home, or away from home. Students already scheduled for the MCAT took their test and didn't feel the need to come anymore. It feels a little insulting to walk into a very empty class (Do I suck that badly??), at the same time, I really enjoy the ability to give my attending students such personalized attention. The fewer of us there are, the more fun we have.

After class I decided to find somewhere nice for dinner, and then go buy a few postcards for various people. Folks, there is not one postcard to be found anywhere in Miami. I must have bought the last one last week. I went to three gas stations. I checked a Publix a Winn-Dixie, and a Wal-Mart. Eventually I staggered into Walgreens, tired, and an hour behind schedule.

"Do you have postcards?"

"Spanishspanish cards?" Points at the greeting card aisle.

"No, postcards. With pictures of dolphins and pelicans and places I never actually visited or saw."

"Spanishspanishspanish, hombre." Points toward the photo counter.

How I know I am not a good person # 2: I stood there seriously considering grumbling back in unhappy French.

Mmes. Barnes and Grim would not be proud of you.

Sigh. "Thanks any ways."

So no postcards from Miami for anyone else (you lucky people who got the last postcard in the entire city of Miami know who you are. Guard that thing with your life, it's like an ancient relic.)

Each time I travel somewhere I keep hoping to have some sort of magical epiphany or realization before I leave. And then when I think back on the trip I can always remember "oh yeah, I learned that lesson the night we climbed the top of the Duomo tower in Florence and watched the sunset." (Incidentally, I did have an epiphany on that trip to Italy, and guarding one's wallet with one's life in a busy airport is probably the best lesson to learn, but I like stuff that's a little more profound.) Unfortunately, you can't force profundity, so if the best lesson I learned this summer was how to find lightning whelks under 5 feet of water, and that body powder and bar soap will take out oil stains, I guess I'll take that and be content.

I keep trying to figure out what exactly I'm going home to. I have no job, no school, and no prospects of either, probably for a long time. I have never been this free in my life, and I really have no idea what to do with it. Really, I could pick up and move to another country next month (in theory at least.) Or run off to Puerto Rico to teach.

Either way, I should probably figure something out soon. I mean, I have a blog to entertain now. :)

A Tale of Two Classes

Greetings from Florida, the bulls-eye in Isaac's scope!

In theory, this should be my last week in Miami, but I have a make up class my students are waiting on. The short story is that the teacher before me started one of my courses (we'll call it the Allen class) with lecture #4, not lecture #1 (cardinal numbers are so hard), and did a very poor job with it. So my whole course has been one lecture behind ever since I started. My supervisors, while not thrilled, understand the problem and are doing their best to find a time to stuff in that last class. It was originally going to be next week, on Monday or Tuesday, but everything's in the air now because of the hurricane.

I like having my courses winding down, but I miss my engaged, intuitive, Institutional students. It seems like I only ever get two different student types: questions-I-can't-answer, and note-gazers.

The Allen class is the former. It was highly apparent in today's lecture.

"So after the myosin head has let go of the actin filament, it hydrolyzes ATP, reconfigures to its high energy conformation, and..."

A hand shoots up.

"Yes?"

"What causes muscle twitches? Like spasms when your eye twitches."

Oy.

I get these students. I used to be one of them, particularly in physiology and neuro. My professors didn't know me by name or face, they knew me by hand.

"Is that what causes comas? Why is the limbic system not a true lobe? How does the planning of the cerebrocerebellum relate to the planning of the frontal lobe?"

I make Hermione proud.

It was how my classmates knew me too.

"You're the one who sits on the far side of Tamkun's class and asks all the really good questions, aren't you?"

It shocked me. Honestly, I always thought that if any of my classmates could get their hands on me they would duct tape my mouth shut.

I love it when they ask me questions I can't answer. It shows they're engaged. I learn new things, I get to stay up late pouring over medical journals. I get to make up abysmal answers off the top of my head.

"Well, I'm not completely certain. Imbalances in ions could be one reason. There are some dopaminergic drugs that do unfortunate things to you regarding muscle movement. I'll look it up and come back to you with a better answer, okay?"

Student nods, scribbles something down on his notes, (Me: 1, Teacher: 0) and we resume the sliding filament theory.

I got questions on Tuberculosis (what exactly do you see in those radiographs?), what do medullary and medulla even mean, and the type of marrow in flat bones.* We were incredibly inquisitive today.

My second class, we'll call the Nova class, is full of note-gazers. It becomes highly apparent during practice question time when I'm trying to get an answer out of them.

"So given what we know about the nature of CO₂, how would we expect to see it cross the blood-brain barrier in question 3?"

My students all carefully scan their workbooks, avoiding eye contact at all costs. I feel like Medusa. Somewhere a cricket quartet begins.

"How about A and B? Are those the correct definitions for facilitated and simple diffusion?"

Someone coughs. A page flips. One of the crickets breaks an A string.

"And what about C? Do we need to actively transport CO₂ into the CSF?"

One lone soul slowly shakes her head.

"Exactly! Remember that blood gasses are hydrophobic, so they can diffuse right across the cell membrane."

I circle D on the board, and we drag ourselves onward.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what it is. Both classes are in the middle of the afternoon, which is never a good time for class, but one of them manages to pull itself through the post-lunch coma and call out a letter or two during passages. The other one seems intent on committing every word of their books to memory. If they did, I'd never know. They would never tell me.

Still, I'll miss both of them when next week rolls around and I'm on my last flight home. I don't think I've ever had quite the unique blend of backgrounds and nationalities in my classrooms before, and I'll miss the Creole, and stumbling over names that have too many vowels in them. Who knows, I may even miss riding out hurricanes.

Probably not.

*For those of you playing at home: I still haven't looked it up, middle from the Latin media, and red bone marrow, not yellow.

Bahia Honda

The summer after I graduated high school my family took a trip to Florida to visit relatives. It was a particularly memorable trip; my aunt had just been diagnosed with cancer, and seemed to be responding well to the chemotherapy. At least, that's what 18-year-old me gathered from what little I heard, and even littler I wanted to ask. We went to SeaWorld and Busch Gardens, walked on the boardwalk on Daytona beach, and eventually all loaded up in the car, complete with my three cousins, for a week or so in the Keys. We listened to the Beach Boy's "Kokomo" nonstop, took the obligatory photo at the "End of the United States" buoy on Key Largo, went deep sea fishing, and wrapped it all up with a day at Bahia Honda State Park. The name, I am told, means "deep bay" in Spanish.

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls...

The beach is deep, with a long sandbar that runs parallel to the shore between two large strips of underwater vegetation. It was there that we found the two big queen conch shells. We brought them home across the country, wrapped in towels, frantically checking them at each rest stop. They sit in our house like pearly pink stars, out of place between the scrub oak and sage.

Before this July, I had not been to Florida in two years. A week after my 24th birthday found me huddled on a standby midnight flight to Orlando racing time before the tide rolled out. Because there is only so much time one can spend in a hospice room, and only so much time one can entertain well-meaning strangers, my brother I took one of my cousins to New Smyrna beach for one day of respite. While the two of them fished, I swam out further than I ever should have, and deeper than I'd ever been to watch the little round porpoises roll past us on the current. The next morning she left us to go further up and further in to places I have yet to see.

Two years from that day I sat across a kitchen table, listening to a woman with eyes like a Verreaux's eagle rejoice over her son gradually conquering chemotherapy. I brought them dinner, celebrated with root beer floats, and marveled. The whole night tasted of sea water and phoenix fire, pressed down and running over.

I returned to Bahia Honda looking for something. The beach is still as I remember, and the signs, admonishing people against removing live shells. I could not find any dead ones. The live coral grows on the dead. Barnacles cling to empty shells. Waving grass sprouts from every nook and cranny in the rocks. The ocean eats itself and lives forever.

I dove until my back blistered, and my sinuses burned. I swam out further than I ever should have, and deeper than I'd ever been, but there was nothing this time. Little pearly pink shards glistened in the sand and under my fingers, but the whole, perfect shell eluded me. Nothing happens the same way twice.

I'd like to say that I saw a dolphin, or touched a ray, or found a huge sand dollar, something like that, but there was nothing big or elegant waiting for me. Little shoals of side-striped and spotted fish scattered under my hands, returning to graze in the wake of everything I kicked up. Once I startled a pufferfish and a barracuda, and I frequently turned around to find myself being trailed by flocks of little butterfly fish. It felt like some sort of strange undersea Narnia. I found myself gradually getting distracted by a royal gramma, bright purple and yellow against the drab sand. It was enough.

God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are sufficient for me.

I drove home through flocks of sleek white ibis, rising out of the Everglades on either side of the road. I crawled through Miami traffic until I made it back to the hotel, and then I laid on my bed all evening, my back an inch deep in aloe and lavender. You win some, you lose some. :) Maybe I'll never find another conch. Maybe I'll find ten tomorrow. But I know I'll see something beautiful as long as I'm watching.

Fight of the Navigator

Week... what, five now? I had an excellent week off to rest and unpack and catch my breath after the past four weeks. The sabbath is over, though, and I have three more weeks of classes ahead of me. I can't decide if that is a lot of time or not. So far I haven't been mugged, or sunburned to a crisp, my mother's two main concerns going into this venture (I hope you didn't place any bets on that.)

Before this trip my experience with Miami consisted of one round trip through the city on my way to the Keys with my family, over 5 years ago. On the first leg of the trip, one of my parents (no names, protecting the innocent) decided it would be a good idea for my 16-year-old sister to practice her driving skills through Miami. On the return leg, I got to navigate through the city (this was before the time of GPS, kids.) You can imagine then, that when I found out I'd be driving myself through this city I was a little less than excited. All I could think of was dodging cars and trucks in Costa Rica just to cross the street for a roasted ear of corn. I expressed this unease to my supervisor, and she promised me I'd get a GPS with my rental car. Hello, Mayhem.

I love that GPS, except when I don't. For the most part it's not the technology's fault. The roads in Miami all seem to have at least three names: County Road 453, Highway 776, Sgt. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt Boulevard. The GPS never knows all three of them.

GPS: In point4miles. Turn right. On. CountyRoad453.

Me: Yeah, sure. Hey look, Vizcaya!

GPS: Prepare to. Turn right.

Me: Who was Sgt John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? Wait... you didn't mean that road did you?

GPS: Turn. Right. Now.

Me: But, but... there are five different roads coming into this intersection!! (No kidding. Who thought that up?)

GPS: Recalculating. Turn right. On. Highway778.

Me: How do they fit so many roads into one intersection???!!

GPS: Are. You. Blind?

Me: *wails*

GPS: Recalculating. You. Moron.

Out of pure frustration I switched that condescending voice to the French one. Now I get condescended to in French, but at least I'm learning something at the same time.

All my classes this week will be for just one course, we'll touch on genetics, neuroanatomy, and the renal and digestive systems. Neuro and genetics have always been two of my favorite subjects. I particularly like teaching neuro because it's quite a heavy topic, and overwhelming to learn, let alone teach. My mother, from day one of my first neuro class, kept telling me the only people she ever knew who understood and enjoyed the topic were incurably strange.

I'll take that for what it's worth. So far it's got me to Miami.

Marooned

There's a monsoon in Atlanta. How do I know, you ask? Because its debris has washed up at gate H11 (and several others for that matter.) I finished dinner in the airport, trotted through the terminal, and... remember what I said about flashing lights? They're still bad news. When the flight that was scheduled to leave at 3 is still hanging around at 6, you know it's going to be a long night.

The unfortunate clerks behind the counter looked overly frazzled, so I left in search of those crack guava-filled pastries, and a seat to watch the flashing lights depress us all. First it was 40 minutes, then 55. They finally seem to have settled on an hour and a half.

Now I have extensive experience entertaining myself in airports. I have no problems unrolling a kanga and sleeping on the ground. But there are always a few stages one goes through before being at zen with the terminal.

Denial: Oh, there's no way we'll be that late. I'm sure the pilot can make up an hour's delay in the sky. The last one did so well with that 20 minute late start.

Anger: $&*%$^$ MIAMI!! I CAN'T EVEN WATCH THE OPENING CEREMONIES HERE! WHY DOES AMERICAN'S FLIGHT LEAVE ON TIME?!*

Bargaining: Maybe the nice stewardess at American likes guava pastries. No? How about a Toblerone? No? Ever wanted to learn about genetics? Yes ma'am, I'll go sit down.

Depression: I'm never going to get out of heeeeerree!! I won't make it to Boulder for my class, and they'll fire me and not let me finish my courses in Miami and I'll never go to Puerto Rico and life as I know it will... Yes ma'am, I'll go sit back down.

Acceptance: Angry Birds!! Netflix!! Namasté, MIA.


*American's flight wound up significantly delayed, too. I might have been just a little self-satisfied with that.

Curtain Call

Today was my last class for one of my sessions, the one that meets at the University of Miami medical school. It's a spectacular campus, full of very busy people scurrying around in white coats, like the lizards up and down the walls. It's also a short walk from my hotel, which is why they're housing me there. I left early this afternoon, hoping to enjoy the walk in the heat as much as possible. The breeze was blowing, the palm trees waving, tropical flowers blooming along the fence. I plucked a fragrant cluster of little red blossoms...

Oh, yeah. Fire ants.

I finished picking the little red demons off my wrists by the time I reached the crosswalk. It took me a minute to realize she was talking to me.

"Ai yi yi, mama! It's too hot to be wearing black! Why aren't you wearing white like me?!"

Actually, that is only a partial translation, given that all I caught was negro, calor, blanco. For all I know, she could have been asking why all the white mamas keep running after the hot black guys. (In Spanish, at least, every woman down here is a mama. The first time I was addressed as such, I had the same reaction as when a friend's kids first called me Ms. Emanuel: Um... that's my mother.)

I had no idea what to say (C'est n'est pas si chaud, madame.) So instead I laughed and responded in English. It took her several sentences to catch on.

"No español?"

Sheepish grin. "Nope. Sorry."

If I wind up getting shipped to Puerto Rico to teach, I definitely have some learnin' to do.

I walk each week into a classroom of Emma Lazarus' making and do everything I can to give my students some sort of fighting edge. And it's hard to think that despite all I've done, there are still some of them who simply won't pass, or pass well enough. I have to make my peace with what I do during each class. Most of my students have never had a physiology course, and my job is to take 7 semester length bio courses and condense them into 25 hours over a 10 week period. Sometimes it just gets a little overwhelming. Fortunately, this class has been spectacular. They seem grateful to have me, they answer my questions (usually), they ask me questions of their own, and stay after class to go over homework problems. It's very satisfying.

Today's class was reproduction and development, something that, despite all the awkward giggles, I've always liked because it clearly highlights the understated elegance of the endocrine system. My students were excellent, enthusiastic and engaging. I've given them everything I knew to give them, I tried to redeem a terrible situation for them as best I could, and I think they understood and acknowledged that.

I left my classroom to applause.

Holes and Nests

By the end of August I'll probably be able to drag myself through security at DIA in my sleep, and have the A terminal memorized. At least the portion around A47.

My flight made it in on schedule and with no more than the usual turbulence. And my luggage came on time as well (and underweight! yay!) which is always the greater accomplishment. After those three days in Africa when I had nothing but a set of scrubs and a toothbrush to my name I've developed a healthy appreciation for good baggage handlers.
I am in the same hotel TPR put me in last week, though two floors up, and with an excellent view of the medical school where I teach one of my sessions. Being right next to a university teaching hospital, there are always interesting people staying, and not just the legion of army medics that were here last week. Patients range from the interesting to the incredibly sad and I have to keep reminding myself not to :
1) stare
2) ask for case history
While learning experiences may abound left and right here I have always sworn that whatever I am, I will not be tacky (I'm not always sure how well that's working out.)
My hotel is in central Miami, in a neighborhood that would be considered quite if it weren't for the roaring hospital across the street. When my supervisor dropped me off she made it quite clear that while going out alone at night was probably a poor decision in any part of Miami, this was a part that did not deal kindly to poor decisions. Consequently, if I am out after dark it is only to float in the hotel pool and watch the Boeings knifing their way through the clouds. I don't really have much to do out of the hotel other than walk to the medical school and grocery store. About 10 minutes away is a little Winn-Dixie where I go for mangoes and guava pastries. The walk takes me along a few old apartment buildings, under broad-leafed nut trees, and over a small drainage for the Miami-Dade county sewer department. The bank is always studded with crabs; lopsided fiddlers, and one big monster who lives in a hole under the sidewalk. I've never seen all of him, but I think he's about as big as my hand. There are signs all along the drainage prohibiting fishing, but nobody has said anything about crab trapping.

The store is always crowded, and always swarming with languages that wash over me like so much water when I enter. I've taking to repeating any and every Spanish phrase I hear, and then picking at it until I find the bones that look so much like my own French. As much as I love the language, and as much fun as I had learning it, it does seem a little silly sometimes. Like someone down in Uruguay deciding to study Icelandic.

It is awfully nice to be able to come back to the same hotel when little else bears semblance to its former self. I left a house empty of almost all remains of former roommates, and soon to be empty of me, too. There is something to be said for having a room with a couch and tables and chairs, for knowing someone else is in the room next door, even if it is a complete stranger. They seem kind of funny, my two strange little half-lives coming together to make something entirely different from both of them, but somehow they work perfectly just now. And who am I to ask otherwise?

Pressure

I woke up this morning with the intention of going for a swim before heading down to breakfast. I also woke up to thunder and lightning, so that finished that idea for me. So instead, I decided to tie up one of the computers in the lounge and people watch right by the elevators. Not necessarily in that order.

I got the phone call to come down to Miami on a Friday afternoon. They wanted me in Florida by Monday. Possibly that gives some impression of the urgency of their need, but I don't think I completely understood it until I arrived and started talking with my students about the previous two weeks. For the sake of the unfortunate former bio teachers I won't say much, except that one of my students told me yesterday that he considered the bio class to have officially started two weeks in, when I finally showed up. It was both flattering and painful.

I teach three classes throughout the week. Two are regular Princeton courses, held independent of any school or college, and open to all applicants. I have about a dozen students in each class, give or take. My third class is an "institutional course." I had never heard of such a thing until I first spoke with the supervisor, and my mind went two places:

1) Psych ward (no, it's not PC)

2) Fancy private university with elite stuck-up students (it is Miami, after all)

It turned out to be neither of the above, fortunately. This class is run through the Diversity Department of the University of Miami's School of Medicine. It is a program for minorities and underprivileged students, helping them through the medical school application process by (among other things) setting up their shadowing opportunities and MCAT prep classes. I walk into a classroom each week ringing with Spanish and Creole and French and wonder that I ever even vaguely considered myself bi-lingual.

I was briefed on this course, and the state of their biology class on my ride to the hotel when I first arrived last week.

"Because it's an institutional course, they expect a very high standard of us, and the state of the biology class is a little less than that right now."

I nodded, imagining first-class me dropping pens and stammering over words. Those poor instructors.

"To say the directors are displeased is a bit of an understatement." My supervisor began to rattle off a litany of "displeased" including teaching to the board, mumbling, being unprepared, and having the students correct the instructors.

"Yikes." I looked at the folder that contained all my notes, and wondered how long it would take to commit all 10 lectures to memory perfectly.

"Yeah, it's been pretty bad. Far below Princeton's standards. While you're teaching you'll have a teaching assistant in the classroom at all times."

I'd never had a teaching assistant. Princeton Review doesn't use them. I imagined having someone to unwrap my cough drops, fill my water bottle, and erase the board while I perched on a desk next to some inquisitive student and filled their mind with the mysteries of biology and physiolo...

"She's not a doctor, and I don't think she's a professor, but she definitely knows her stuff, and will be checking to make sure you know yours."

My heart plummeted to my kidneys.

"I was told she spent the first few classes constantly taking notes in the back of the class because of all the wrong material the teacher was giving her students. We kept getting phone calls after class because of it. They're not very impressed right now."

What little I remembered of the Great Litany started running through my mind:

From the hypercritical, and all those who wish to see us crash and burn,
Good Lord deliver us.*

"What are you humming"?

"Oh, nothing. So she'll be in there all class?"

I imagined a scowling menace in the back of the auditorium grilling me on biochemistry while my students looked on and smirked.

"Probably. Unless she thinks you're doing well."

By now, my supervisor must have seen my face.

"Oh, I'm not trying to scare you! You had great student reviews and score improvements! I'm sure you'll do just fine! But I wanted to let you know what you're getting in to."

Too late. "Fair enough."

I have never been so scared walking into a class. I don't think that even my first class was as intimidating as this one. The teaching assistant greeted me at the door with a friendly smile and a handshake.

I bet she can smell fear. You don't scare me, woman, I work with eagles.

The class was microbiology: viruses, bacteria, and a list on fungi that I didn't have time to get to, forgot last class, and will have to scribble on the board sometime during break on Thursday. Whoops. It went well, too. After the one class where I forgot my micro notes and had to lecture off of what I remembered and what I could scribble down in 30 minutes I like to think I have it down solid. My supervisor picked me up after that class to drop me off at my next one. Right before she let me out she remarked that the office hadn't received any angry phone calls from UM.

"That means you did well. If you hadn't performed to her standards, we'd have heard by now. Did she stay in the classroom the whole time?"

"No. I think she was in and out."

"Well that's a good sign. It means she thought you were doing well enough that she didn't have to keep track of everything you said."

I bounced off to my next class ecstatic.

*I'm pretty sure this part was when our deacon hit one of the chairs with the thurible, so if you don't remember it, that may be why.

Be Prepared

Welcome to week two of running amok in Miami intensive and diligent training for our proud future doctors.

I've always been a fan of airports and flying. Most people I know find it stressful and taxing; I've always adored travel. Except for packing. I've never been particularly good at packing, I either neglectfully under pack (It's Africa! Who ever heard of it being cold in Africa?!) or neurotically over pack. This time around I chose the latter, though I believe I may have justification. Hear me, oh people, and judge accordingly.

I spent last Thursday night/Friday morning in an exhausted delirium, lugging a 25 pound duffel bag through the bowels of DIA, trying desperately to make it to my car in Utah the economy lot before my legs gave out from under me. Yes, it was that pathetic. During the drive home I swore by all things good and holy that on my next flight down I would be accompanied by something with wheels and a collapsible handle. Enter my parent's rolling suitcase.

It was big and beautiful. It had wheels and a collapsible handle and so much space! I lovingly braided an ID ribbon around its handle, and fell to carefully filling it with everything I brought with me last week. And maybe a few extra shirts. And the MCAT homework book. And the new fancy accordion folder I bought to keep my notes and receipts straight. But that's it, and I swear on all my life.

When I heaved it onto the scale at DIA the readout started blinking furiously. Now I remember enough from childhood StarTrek marathons with my father to know that blinking lights = bad news. I checked to make sure I wasn't wearing a red shirt, and then glanced at the clerk who was eyeing my behemoth of a bag suspiciously.

"It's overweight, isn't it?"

"Yep."

"It's going to cost extra, isn't it?" Wince.

"$125 please."

This is how I know I am not a good person: For a brief, fleeting moment I actually considered it. I eyed my credit card and wondered if Princeton Review wouldn't notice that my baggage fee had mysteriously increased five-fold.

"What can I say, American just charges way more than US Airways."

And then the poor-decision-recognition center kicked in (I think it's somewhere by the pre-frontal cortex) and I dragged my bag off the scale and glowered at it. I considered pulling a Poisonwood Bible, but decided that I really didn't want to land in Miami wearing three shirts and an extra pair of pants. Instead, I wound up pulling all my MCAT books and folders out of the bag. It met weight, but just barely, and I was left toting a stack of print the size of the Gutenberg Bible through the A terminal of DIA. In the end, though, we both made it to Miami International Airport, and on the same flight, which is even more of an accomplishment.

So, assume what you will about my packing capabilities, but should a blizzard hit Miami while I'm here, I'm sure I will be the only prepared person in the city.

What's In A Name?

I never wanted to be a teacher.

While my childhood career interests were many and varied (including, but not limited to, cartographer and street sweeper driver) I don't ever recall teaching being on the list. I don't even remember playing "teacher"or "school" with any great enthusiasm. And while it seemed to be a phase that most of my friends went through in jr. high and high school, teaching as a profession never once crossed my mind.

I applied to teach with The Princeton Review on a whim, over a year ago; I was underemployed, frustrated, bored, and desperate for anything new. I found the advertisement on Craigslist of all places, filled out the required forms, and wailed when they started asking me supplementary questions.

"Describe your teaching philosophy."

"Describe your previous teaching experience. Include any diverse student populations you have worked with."

At that time, my teaching experience was limited to one semester as a teaching assistant in an undergraduate anatomy lab. It was a simple position that mostly consisted of drilling students on the branches of the facial nerve, finding the common interosseous artery for the millionth time, and reciting raunchy mnemonics (cranial nerves, anybody?)During my first month I was absolutely terrified. Most of my "teaching" consisted of watching my classmates give a lecture on the brachial plexus, and nodding sagaciously. I eventually warmed up to the position, and enjoyed watching my students master difficult concepts and succeed. Still, that was all the teaching I ever wanted, and when May rolled around I was a little more than relieved.

So here I was, driving to Boulder to give a five minute audition lesson for a position I'd never trained for, or prepared for, or even wanted. That is a long drive and a lot of time to argue with oneself.


"I can't do this. I'm not a teacher. I don't want to teach."


"Yeah, but you don't have a choice. It's decent money. And you know this material forwards and backwards."


"I don't want to teach. I can't stand in front of a classroom for two and a half hours and talk. Introverts don't teach."


"Well, what other ideas do you have?"


"..."


"That's what I thought."

It went like that for 60 miles.

My audition lesson was on the difference between hawks and falcons. I was terrified. The interviewers said I did a great job channeling my nerves to put energy into my presentation. I had no idea. I went to Qdoba afterwards, got a celebratory burrito, and alternated between people watching and trying to figure out why these poor, deluded, fools thought I would make a good instructor. I wondered that all through my training. I wondered it during my first class, in between nervously dropping markers and notes.

Her name was Andy, and for the rest of my life, I'll never forget her. She came up to me with tears in her eyes after the first class, stammering about how she'd never had good biology professors and didn't know a thing about this subject.

"This is not my place. Someone else would know what to tell her. Someone else would show her how to learn. Someone else would know how to make this work. Someone else, someone else..."

But there was only me, so it had to be my place, and it had to work. And it did. I watched all 10 of my terrified undergrads transform into confident students who answered my questions with questions of their own. Somehow I came to own this thing that was never supposed to be mine in the first place. Each lecture brought me closer to a potential I had never imagined, and slowly, reluctantly, I came to realize that I might actually be good at this kind of thing. I might even like it.

I never wanted to be a teacher, but teaching, it turned out, wanted me. And right now, I couldn't think of anything better.

Greetings!

Hi there, folks. Given the recent changes in my circumstances, it has been suggested multiple times that I start a blog while I'm running back and forth across the country. I've never really been one for blogging (heck, I can't even remember to write in my journal most days) but I figured I'd give it a shot. Perhaps, if anyone out there is thinking of teaching for TPR, this could be a good source of information. More to come, I promise, but my office hours are about to start.