Too Legit to Quit

Happy news today; I'm being upgraded to just lazy and homeless, as opposed to being Teslagrl's lazy, homeless, unemployed boyfriend. I stopped by the hospital on a recent morning, to attend the weekly emergency dept. conference thingy. I drank the coffee, I ate the bagel and cream cheese. I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while.

Something about me (or them, or the spot we presently occupy in the yearly schedule) must have changed, because when I went home over winter break, people were like, "oh. You've been gone?" Whereas today, I got handshakes and friendly greetings from various staff, faculty, RNs, and residents. Maybe it's because during the last year, I may have doubled or tripled my actual knowledge base, and now radiate a sense of reduced dumb-assedness. Maybe.

In any case, I sat through the third-year residents' presentations of their "scholarly" work; some of said work was really good, and either will be or has recently been published in medical journals. Some was... well, let's just say that anyone in my Micro tutorial could have PowerPointed circles around a couple of these folks. Have no fear, sick and injured of the Twin Cities. They're good doctors, and their presenting skills are unimportant; it's just that they happen to be not-so-stellar in this case. My take-home message was, "dang, I guess all that stuff I did at that weirdo college will pay off in more ways than I know about."

And I tracked down my boss, a very busy guy who tends not to return a phone call unless he has an answer to the question being asked. Which is difficult for me, since I spent all that time in the world of "gosh, sir, we still haven't located that document, so if you'd like to send it again, you should feel free, or if you'd prefer I can just check in with you on Friday and let you know where we stand."

In this case at least, the suspenseful way isn't too bad, because we went pretty rapidly from "so hey, what do you have for open patterns?" to "it's about the same pay as part-time, maybe a little more; you'll be earning benefits; and orientation is on Monday." The only potential kink is that I'll be working shifts that are either 3pm -11pm, or else 11pm - 7am.

Still, I can work my other daily activities and socializing around the hours, and indeed I'll need to hone this skill if I'm going to work in Emergency Med the rest of my life. Plus I've learned to live on not very much sleep. Plus my sense of what time of day is appropriate for working has been completely scrambled by Bennington anyhow.

And speaking of 'scrambled,' there will be days when I get off work at 7:30am, and go directly to the little diner a block from the hospital. Sleep til 2pm, study GRE stuff. If it's a work night I take a nap. If not, I go out. Could be worse.