One year, one knitting project

This scarf is about 5 million miles long. It took me forever because it had the awesome characteristics of being both boring to knit and incredibly slow (ribbed). It is two full balls of yarn alternated because I've finally learned that if I end a project and just have partial balls of yarn around, they just sit in my box and never get used. I use too many types of yarn in too many weights to combine them all in a project. So it is best just to use it all. The scarf is nice and soft and matches these. Go me.

The crazy

I've been making derisive comments about returning to interact medical students because they're crazy. Most are young and inexperienced. Nearly all are competitive. Some get so competitive they get called "gunners," as in, "they'd gun you down if you get ahead of them." Nearly all get sucked into focusing far too much on medical school and grades to the exclusion of everything else. Some of it is predilection and some of it is the socialization that happens when you get locked in a classroom with a bunch of stressed, competitive people for two years.

I think I've been putting too much emphasis on the predilection, though. For the past few months I've been dealing with getting all my bureaucratic ducks in a row to go back to medical school. It should not be this hard.

Admittedly, I am a slightly unique case as an MD/PhD student, but there are 8 of us returning this year and it happens every year. I am also a post-doctoral student at the moment, so there are some other layers of complication, but really not much.

I emailed the appropriate people in November. They said to wait until February. Fine. Then a list of Things To Do came in February, and I've been diligently working my way through them. There have been about 10 things on the list. Of these, 3 have caused substantial hassle or been entirely wrong.

For instance, it says I need to get a hospital ID card. Then we got a email saying they need the number off our ID card to get scrub orders in the system. So I went to the guy to get my picture taken to take to the lady to get the ID form. Which then required a form that I took to the med office to get signed where I was told that they wouldn't sign it and I'd get my card in June. Which means it didn't need to be on my list at all *and* that I can't do the scrubs business. And I wasted a morning running around. And I had to email about 8 people to get everything ironed out. I was totally acting like a crazy medical student. Danger!

Evaluations

I keep waiting for the student evaluations to hand out in class, but it appears the university has finally grown up and probably now has online evaluations. This is the same university that didn't have web access to email in 2003. They move a little slow.

There is one week of class left and only two more lectures for me to give. I thought I was going to have a guest lecturer this morning, and then he was a no-show. So I winged it. And I actually did OK. It's like I know something and am pretty comfortable teaching. Go me - gold star! I can tell I've gotten more comfortable as the semester has gone on as I actually stand up to lecture, now, as opposed to sitting and hiding behind my laptop.

Teaching has been good and not very weird - I know I have some specialized knowledge. What is weird is evaluating other people. These are grown up graduate students who are generally highly motivated . . . whatever, I will do it.

We are also finding a new, full time nanny. Sigh. It turns out the internet is still pretty awesome - we posted an ad online and have gotten 5 very reasonable sounding responses (they can write a complete sentence, have some experience) that we will be interviewing. More things to evaluate. And at least 4 people we are going to have to reject. Weird.