In a fit of biannual med school spirit I volunteered to give tours to the potential incoming first years at their revisit weekend.
In return I was permitted to attend their first night feast of catered free-ness. They even let me bring Irreverand Boyfriend for the complimentary beer, wine and limitless chicken drowned in sketchy sauce.
We showed up a few minutes late and were unable to find an open table with bright eyed incomers so we settled for a table with a slew of current first years.
I actually didn't realize they were ALL first years. As a fourth year I'm pretty distant from the pre-clinical (first and second year) students. They don't know me, I don't know them.
It was precisely this fact that Irreverand Boyfriend capitalized upon in an effort to distract me from my horrid realization that OH MY GOD. I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS THEM. NOW I'M GOING TO BE A DOCTOR. Angst, angst, angst.
He leaned over to the first year sitting next to him and asked, "So, how do you like it here?"
She was taken aback and said, "Oh! Are you a prospective? I'm sorry, I thought you were an upper classman... well, I like it here a lot!"
Irreverand Boyfriend went on through this charade through three separate groups of first years.
He told people he knew me through a childhood friend of mine who he met at Hypochondriacs Anonymous. He truthfully said he graduated from college in 2007, but stated not so truthfully that he spent the years since soul searching in Nepal. He found this a necessary escape after he was the victim of a brutal attack in Grand Central Station wherein a homeless man held him in a head lock for three minutes and beat him over the head with a bottle, forcing him to reevaluate his perspectives on humanity.
In Nepal he was exposed to local remedies for colorectal ailments including burning a certain herb native to the region in order to waft the smoke into the ailing areas.
When I asked if that meant he had to lean over the fire and spread his bare cheeks, he didn't miss a beat. "Well, yes, if you want to be crass about it, but I prefer to maintain a degree of respect for the practice, Pants."
In an effort to try and break him I asked about his modern dance habit I had been told of and he promptly replied that though he spent two summers at an Alvin Ailey dance camp he just wasn't committed to the field.
I thought we'd reached the final straw when he asked how many students exotic danced in the city to stave off the burden of loans, but no. Grey's Anatomy has desensitized this generation of future doctors from the incredulousness of taking off one's clothes as a means to fund professional school.
No, the final straw came when he asked about the options for urban hunting.
"Urban Hunting?" A particularly gullible first year asked.
"Yeah, you know, like picking off squirrels and vermin in Central Park. That doesn't happen? Stealth Street Pigeon Stakeouts? No?"
"I don't know. I mean, my interests are diametrically opposed. I saved turtles for a summer in undergrad."
"Oh, like, the meat?"
"What?"
"You mean you saved the meat? You know, for later?"
"No, I saved them. Like, tagged them and rehab-ed them for the wild."
The funny thing is until that moment not a soul doubted his stories, questions and seeming social ineptitude. So for those of you who wonder what it's like to go to med school, that is it, right there.
Thank you, sweet loveface, for distracting me from the fact that I've been there, done that, and am on my way to the next step.
Which means you are doing what with your life, may I ask?
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