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.