Some Women Turn to Salt, Looking Back

It was a strange day yesterday.

I had an exam in the morning, but The Brain didn't feel like studying. I finally convinced The Brain to study a bit from around 3 a.m. until 7 a.m. or so. After I finished reviewing, I made lunch and got ready for school. Class started at 9:30, but I was there at 8:30 or so. I sat outside the classroom and chatted with a few other students and then went in and took the exam.

We are not allowed to have our cell phones on us when we take exams, so most people leave them in their bags. One woman left hers turned on and it kept ringing and ringing and finally the instructor went over and dug it out of the bag it was in and turned it off and put it in her own bag. Then another cell phone went off--this one not ringing but buzzing. Buzzing. Buzzing. Buzzing. The instructor couldn't find the bag that one was in. But whatever. I was done with my exam by then.

I got an A, by the way. (Which I only know because the exam was in preparation for the national exam, so our scores are computed immediately and we get a breakdown as soon as we submit, unlike the normal class exams which we have to wait a week to get the final scores for.)

After class there was a bit of lecture, then I had to go and talk to the instructor, the one that I don't like. I went up with a group of people who were piggybacking on my time because they are afraid of having to face her one-on-one (whereas I don't care about that; I find her unpleasant rather than fearsome.) This is her: We cooled our heels for almost an hour (long past the start of her office hours) until she finally deigned to see us.

After I spoke to her, I spoke to another instructor (one who I like, but who I don't get to deal with very much because she teaches the online class that has no face-to-face lecture time). Then I had to speak to one more woman who...ugh. I'm done with instructors. This new instructor (not one of my regular instructors) gave me a parking pass for my next offsite clinical assignment. I went back to show one of the other students the parking pass so that he could pick one up and the instructor I don't like (who is always saying shit like this) said, "Did you just take that?" Like I had just fucking stolen a parking pass from the other woman's office.

My strategy with dealing with the instructor I don't like is to be super saccharine, that kind of super, over-the-top nice that you use with people who are not very smart (but who are just smart enough to be suspicious when you meet their nastiness with sticky-syrupy-but-entirely-fake sweetness. I mean, you thank them profusely when they do even the littlest thing that they should be doing anyway. You use overly formal, ornate means of addressing them. You feign a kind of smarmy deference to their every action. They can't call you on it because they know you aren't doing anything wrong, but they recognize that you're mocking them and they know that it's inherent disrespectful.) So I said in a super sweet, cartoon-y, innocent voice, dumb, like Marilyn Monroe might use, "Oh, no, of course not! I would never do anything like that!" And I walked away.

I met one of the other students on the way downstairs, a friend from class, and she was in tears. We stood for a long time talking about her dilemma and how she is going to have to retake at least one of the classes this term, which sucks because of the way the program is structured. (We are clustered so that our cohort has a huge expectation that we'll move up step-wise together and a lot of students who don't follow that rigid scheme end up having to deal with massive amounts of shame and disappointment, which is one of the big problems with that kind of program, as far as I'm concerned.)

She called me later and we chatted some more about her dilemma and I tried to reassure her that there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing things her own way and that the thing that knocked her out of the program at this point was not on her, but was a stupid, indefensible rule mixed with a misunderstanding and that she should weather it and move on. I don't know that she quite believed me, but she will in another 10 years or so.

My advice--more of a constant refrain, really--to the students who are failing and tempted to drop out of the program has been: Don't let them discourage you. Don't let them make you doubt yourself. And if they want you out, make them throw your ass out. Make them drag you out--and then fight them when they try.

Because it's that. It's just that.

I napped in the afternoon and then Dave and I went to dinner and to Target for a bunch of stuff that we needed (and a lot of stuff that we didn't need). I was so exhausted that I was dragging myself around the store and the chirpy, happy cashier just made me feel older and tireder than I was before.

I have a ton of studying to do today. Then we have a voice lesson in the afternoon.