Yesterday, I went to the student health center on campus. I should have done this a long time ago, but I have been too busy. Past experience tells me that getting a new doctor can be time consuming and involved. I thought that the summer lull would be a good time to establish myself with the center, get a doctor there, and have my records transferred from my PCP in Boston. With that in mind, I called Monday to schedule an appointment. The person I spoke with was confused and brusque at first, but eventually we understood each other, and she made the appointment.
When I walked through the door yesterday, I was greeted by a computer monitor with "Self Check-in System" scrawling across it. One just swipes one's university ID and follows a series of prompts to check oneself in. I'm sure this is a very efficient system, but it felt rather impersonal. I wasn't sure what I'd gotten myself into. Then, I found my way to the waiting area, following signs as the computer system directed. After a few minutes, a nurse came in with a clipboard and forms to fill out, which was good because it gave me time to recover from my bike ride before having my blood pressure, etc. taken. When I'd filled out the forms, the same nurse took the usual measurements in a hallway-like space and ushered me into a typical examination room. The doctor came in after about ten minutes. He shook my hand and introduced himself as Dr. Andrews, but I got the feeling this friendly greeting was a common formality; there was no sincerity in his touch.
Then, Dr. Andrews sat down opposite me and asked me why I was there in a bland, bored tone. Each time I would say something, there would follow a long pause while he just sat there looking at me... or the floor. I didn't know what to say or do. It was clear that Dr. Andrews didn't think I should be there since, to my knowledge, there is nothing physically wrong with me, and he wasn't sure what to do either. He didn't even want to do the cholesterol test that was scheduled as part of the appointment. He said it was very likely my Boston PCP did one last year, and it didn't need to be done every year. He didn't examine me at all. Instead, he drew me a little map of where "medical records" was located in the building and sent me on my way to fill out forms to have my records transferred. He also told me the health center's operating hours and mentioned I could have the same doctor each time if I wanted. The way he said this made it sound like he didn't think it was necessary, normal, or desirable for me to want to see him again. Words can't express how his tone was discouraging. I walked out thinking, "Yeah, uhm, right. I'll be beating down your door. I bet they have better bedside manner in the morgue."
When I got to medical records, a kid hooked up to an iPod told me he'd be with me in a moment, and I waited while he moved around the room stuffing manila envelopes into slots. Then he gave me some forms to fill out and disappeared. Some other guy came over after a few minutes, and, again, I got twenty questions about why I was there. "No, it is not connected with any issue or appointment, per se. I'm just establishing service here. I will be at the university for awhile and would like the clinic to have my medical records."
The worst part about the experience was that each time I answered these questions, the people didn't act like they really cared what the answers were. They asked out of mild curiousity because my situation was unusual to them, but the answer didn't seem to interest them at all. The whole place acted like I was putting them out because I was there when there wasn't anything wrong with me. They assume that students are 19-22 years old, healthy, and have their own doctors elsewhere who handle routine, annual exams. The student health center is there to deal with accidents, colds, flu, and allergies. That's all. I honestly wanted to scream, "No, I'm NOT SICK. But I'm also not 19 yrs old on mommy and daddy's medical insurance back home in Iowa. I am a graduate student who lives here all the time and has the university medical insurance. I don't want to get sick. I want to have regular check-ups with a doctor who has read my records and knows me. You know, like I'm supposed to do! If you don't want to do this, you shouldn't insist that we name the student health center as our PCP on our insurance!"
Once again, graduate student life has its downsides.
Thursday, June 22, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
External Validation, at Last!
Last Monday, I finished my last paper of the quarter/year and turned it in . The class was Victorian Novel with a professor I admire, and I partly applied to my university to be able to work with her. Consequently, I had a lot invested in the outcome of this paper.
For my reactions to make sense, you need to know a little about the professor. She is a New Historicist critic, which I aspire to be, and has done some very respected work on little girls in Victorian Literature, specifically on the relationship between girls and adult male writers. In a nonpedophilic way, it's a more interesting subject than you might think at first. Consider Lewis Carrol and young Alice Liddell, for instance. Anyway, this professor is very critical and very British, which means her reactions to my classroom work have been difficult to read. If you are familiar with the stereotypical British temperment, you know what I mean. She condescendingly guffaws and snorts at almost anything anyone says in class and pushes her own interpretations of the material with such understatement that one is never quite sure what she thinks about his or her ideas, despite her blustering. Yet irrespective of this, she comes off as perfectly charming and delightful, even when she disagrees with you; however, she can be vicious to written work, which I learned to my grief earlier in the quarter when she ripped apart a previous paper with a pencil-sized scythe.
You see, the class was set up so that we had to write, in addition to weekly response papers and a class presentation, two seminar papers of 8-10 pages instead of one paper of 20-30 pages, as is normal. The professor explained this by saying it allowed us to engage more than one of the novels from the class if we were so inclined. In addition, conference papers are rarely over that length, and she stressed that our papers should approximate conference-style papers. This seems easy, right? I should be able to write 8-10 pages in a day with no problem, right? Wrong. After years of writing lengthy seminar papers, I found it difficult to write a short paper that still contained sufficient depth, flare, and response to critical discourse, and as I indicated, my first attempt to do so for this class achieved disasterous results.
Consequently, I waited tremulously for the return of this last paper. Part of me craved to see the results with a desire that bordered on unstable, but part of me denied the very existence of the offending document. I wanted desperately to do well in this class above all others because it's my area, and I felt a need to prove myself on this paper. When I picked it up recently, my hands trembled and my stomach lurched as I grasped the pages and glimpsed the prof's pencil scrawl covering the entire right-hand margin of the first page. But lo and behold, she was all praise of it and my work in general in her end comments. Well, not ALL praise. She made some typically scathing margin comments that I need to look at more closely, but her end comments were almost wholly positive! I can't properly express how elated I was when I read her glowing remarks. My knees almost buckled... although maybe that was from my bike ride beforehand. But seriously, I shouted alleluias to the fountain in the building's courtyard and sprinted back and forth in front of it with childlike glee. I'm sure I looked pretty foolish, but I didn't care. Besides, there was no one to see.
Such is the life of the graduate student. Most people don't understand it exactly. They can identify with this feeling, but not the context. I often wonder about my choice to remove myself from "the real world" and pursue a life in the academy, but days like this make it worth it. Perhaps I'll stick with this Ph.D. thing after all.
For my reactions to make sense, you need to know a little about the professor. She is a New Historicist critic, which I aspire to be, and has done some very respected work on little girls in Victorian Literature, specifically on the relationship between girls and adult male writers. In a nonpedophilic way, it's a more interesting subject than you might think at first. Consider Lewis Carrol and young Alice Liddell, for instance. Anyway, this professor is very critical and very British, which means her reactions to my classroom work have been difficult to read. If you are familiar with the stereotypical British temperment, you know what I mean. She condescendingly guffaws and snorts at almost anything anyone says in class and pushes her own interpretations of the material with such understatement that one is never quite sure what she thinks about his or her ideas, despite her blustering. Yet irrespective of this, she comes off as perfectly charming and delightful, even when she disagrees with you; however, she can be vicious to written work, which I learned to my grief earlier in the quarter when she ripped apart a previous paper with a pencil-sized scythe.
You see, the class was set up so that we had to write, in addition to weekly response papers and a class presentation, two seminar papers of 8-10 pages instead of one paper of 20-30 pages, as is normal. The professor explained this by saying it allowed us to engage more than one of the novels from the class if we were so inclined. In addition, conference papers are rarely over that length, and she stressed that our papers should approximate conference-style papers. This seems easy, right? I should be able to write 8-10 pages in a day with no problem, right? Wrong. After years of writing lengthy seminar papers, I found it difficult to write a short paper that still contained sufficient depth, flare, and response to critical discourse, and as I indicated, my first attempt to do so for this class achieved disasterous results.
Consequently, I waited tremulously for the return of this last paper. Part of me craved to see the results with a desire that bordered on unstable, but part of me denied the very existence of the offending document. I wanted desperately to do well in this class above all others because it's my area, and I felt a need to prove myself on this paper. When I picked it up recently, my hands trembled and my stomach lurched as I grasped the pages and glimpsed the prof's pencil scrawl covering the entire right-hand margin of the first page. But lo and behold, she was all praise of it and my work in general in her end comments. Well, not ALL praise. She made some typically scathing margin comments that I need to look at more closely, but her end comments were almost wholly positive! I can't properly express how elated I was when I read her glowing remarks. My knees almost buckled... although maybe that was from my bike ride beforehand. But seriously, I shouted alleluias to the fountain in the building's courtyard and sprinted back and forth in front of it with childlike glee. I'm sure I looked pretty foolish, but I didn't care. Besides, there was no one to see.
Such is the life of the graduate student. Most people don't understand it exactly. They can identify with this feeling, but not the context. I often wonder about my choice to remove myself from "the real world" and pursue a life in the academy, but days like this make it worth it. Perhaps I'll stick with this Ph.D. thing after all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)