Beat down

This morning I had an interview scheduled with an important doctor and med school professor at Duke and he rescheduled on me so he could go running with his wife this morning. That shows you how important I am in the hierarchy of the "medical arena." Nevertheless, we ended up meeting later in the morning.

It started off a little rocky. He sat across from me in his yellow Ralph Lauren sweater over his plaid button-up with his head in his hands like “ohhhh I’m so important and busy I can’t even look at you.” Finally, after a few minutes of awkwardness he started elaborating on his research. We had a really long, helpful talk. He told me about his very first job the summer before he began undergrad at Duke and how he had to jump on trash in a dumpster to compact it, and now he sees that his employers were just trying to decrease his ego as well as the amount of trash. He gave me a lot of advice about getting into medical school and told me that it would all come down to what happens over the next two years. And how it doesn’t matter how convoluted your path is, if you just say to yourself “Dammit, I’m going to do it,” then you will do it. In his opinion, he said, medical school is an endurance race. You don’t have to be the sharpest knife in the box, but you have to be willing to keep cutting and cutting and cutting and cutting. He also told me “when you sit down for your med school interview three years from now, this is what you should say…..” He questioned me really hard about my future plans and how I’m going about accomplishing my goals. It was like a really hard grind. He gave me two compliments. 1- That he was impressed that I was not “flustered” by his questions and 2- That he was confident in me in the lab without even knowing me very well. He also told me that what I want to do is “absolutely attainable”. It was like a free motivational/advising meeting. It was the first time I had the opportunity to talk personally with someone like him and the advice he gave me will stick with me, and was well worth all of the drama that ensued afterwards…

Me, being the boy-girl that I am, paid for my prissy-resistant attitude today. I absolutely cannot carry a purse over one shoulder. I don’t know what my complex is with this but it is just so hard for me. I can totally handle a messenger-style bag that goes across my body, but I don’t mess with the shoulder bags. Well, the only brown one I have is kind of raggedy so I decided to leave it in the car and just carry in with me my phone in my pocket, my notebook in my hand, and my keys. Then I left my keys hanging on the coat-hanger on the back of the bathroom stall. When I went back for them they were gone. After about an hour of scavenger hunt style searching (and their aloof ignoring) with the Duke police, Lost and Found, Janitorial services, and Information desk I had no luck so I had to have the car towed from the fourth floor of the parking garage to a service center to have a new key made.

When the tow truck arrived we had to break into the car to put it in neutral to get it out of the parking space. Meanwhile, a lady passing by us in the parking area in her brand new BMW got smashed into by some guy trying to exit his parking space. He felt that if the tow truck wasn’t parked nearby then none of this would have happened because the lady wouldn’t have been hesitating to pass by. The police came and handled that.

Today was a challenge and I got beat up a little bit but I learned some valuable lessons. And I'm really sorry about that mishap with the brand new beamer. :-/