Just returned home from a night in my seminar course, Liberal Arts Perspectives: Time. Today has been pretty rough, as I spent most of my sleeping hours finishing the research paper for my elective, Women in World War II. As a clear indication of my fuzzy mental state I inexplicably volunteered to present my seminar research paper an entire week early.
I will now let the word "volunteer" completely sink in.
Just so we're perfectly clear: I physically raised my hand -with full knowledge of the consequence of said action- to sign myself up to present a twenty page research paper SEVEN days earlier than required. I did this willingly, without a masked man putting a gun to my head. I mean, really?! There was a brief moment when I considered this might be a bad idea, but then realized I will test the very limits of my physical and mental constitution for glowing recommendations to my doctoral program of choice. I believe this makes me the academic equivalent of a consumer whore, oui?
I couldn't shake the feeling of having a giant sweater wrapped around my brain; further evidenced by a classic uncomfortable moment: while a class mate was poignantly detailing his poetic near-death experience undergoing surgery on a malignant brain tumor, I started laughing. It was that most dreaded of moments when you feel the giggle bubbling up...I had suddenly -horrifically- thought of a very funny exchange at brunch yesterday. And the laughter decided to make an audible appearance. Realizing I looked like a completely insensitive jerk, I pulled the classic recover: **fake coughing. Except that I did cough up something -probably lodged from lunch- and proceeded to somewhat choke. Not completely, but enough that I quite simply made matters worse.
Stares. Stares aaallll the way around that room. Kind of like the guy above...go figure.
**Come on, you know what I'm talking about...we've all been "that guy" during the funeral, or church, or lecture from the Holocaust survivor.
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Masha relates a similar episode from her days as a medical student while on her psychiatry rotation. So, while listening to one patient in sever depression talk about how she wants to kill herself, she recalls a previous itnerview where a patient went into detail describing Elvis Presley's last moments in this world with particular emphasis on the manner in which a "turd was hanging out of his ass" and she started to burst into laughter. The attending took a very dim view of this.
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