High Tides and Nucleotides

Just yesterday, a friend of mine told me he thought of me when he saw all the back-to-school sales/specials in stores now that it's "that" time of the year again. And then he said he remembered that I was no longer a student. Indeed. In fact, on Tuesday, I stopped by the university registrar's office after work to pick up my gorgeous diploma. Wow. It makes it real to have paper in hand. That's where all my money went.

After finishing everything and tying up all loose ends, I took a nice couple of weeks of vacation. Much needed. I needed to get far away for just a little bit to recover from the ravages of school, etc.

Now that I'm back, though, yeah, I guess it's sort of weird to be working in a university setting, but no longer be a student. I'm sure I can still get away with being mistaken for a student and all...I'm not sure exactly when people cross that invisible line where no one ever mistakes them for being a student or underage or whatever, but if I felt vain I'd say I'd like to think I have a few more years before that happens. But whatever....

That's because I have to start observing classes as part of my new position at the med school. Did I tell you about my job yet? It gets technical, so I'll spare the details. Suffice it to say that tomorrow morning, bright and early, I have to sit in on a class called "Molecular and Cellular Medicine". I'm catching the tail end of a weeklong unit on "Nucleotide and Protein Structure and Function", DNA replication, hemoglobin function. Tomorrow's class ends with an actual cystic fibrosis patient coming in to share his (her?) experiences with students. Should be interesting, though I'm not there for content knowledge. I'm there as an educational researcher/program evaluator to assess the pedagogy itself.

Wish me luck. Tomorrow morning, I will be amongst a bunch of bright, ambitious, hopeful students who are mostly in their early or mid-20's (if I had to guess), and either sleepy or over-caffeinated. Probably both. It's telling that a med student I was talking to at the gym the other day mentioned in passing that the oldest student in her class is "this 35 year old guy who is married with four kids".

Will share other things later and as they happen. Happy to have a holiday weekend to slip out of town for a few days and what not. I'm a little bit sad to not be doing the local women's 4 miler this year due to ongoing injury and not having had time to train if I had wanted to this summer.

Doubly sad b/c the weather looks to be perfect for the race (70's, sun, no humidity), as Hurricane Earl churns up the coast and bypasses Virginia instead of coming ashore with monster waves and high tide like Hurricane Isabel did in September 2003. Living a few hours inland, I never thought I'd experience the eye of a hurricane first-hand, but did I ever and boy was it eerie because, 1) it happened at night with the power out, so it was pitch black and then got bright outside, and 2)it's just like people say--it really did become deceptively still and calm all of a sudden before a renewed ferocity as the second half of that churning meteorological monster passed through.

Off to bed.