No baby? No problem.
Just grab an armload of Carolyn's Teddy bear collection
During the heat of the day (it has been approaching 900 this week, and will continue to
do so for the foreseeable future) I sit inside with my little Toshiba and endeavor
to pass the exams necessary to become a
volunteer with the Rivkin people. Yes,
even to lick envelopes you have to pass an exam; two of them, in fact. Each exam consists of upwards of a dozen “modules”,
and each module is at least several pages long – and, I must say – awfully boring. After studying each module
I am required to take an exam. So far I
have completed three modules from the first course, and have passed two with
flying colors and the third by the skin of my teeth. Between modules I mess with my bird feeders,
clip the bushes, water the cactus, and even clean the kitchen. You know my heart’s not in it when I prefer
kitchen work to study.
Mind you, I am not blaming the Rivkin people. Apparently this is a nation-wide sort of
initiation ritual, mandated by various governmental agencies designated by
acronyms consisting of three or more capital letters (FDA, for example.) People who sweep the floors of labs or
offices concerned with research on human subjects have to take exams; so do UPS
guys who drop off packages! Actually, I’m
making that up, of course – but at times all this fuss seems a bit excessive. But what do I know? Most of my life I worked with rocks. Rocks don’t bleed, complain, or hire
lawyers. I’ll gladly take their damned
tests if it will allow me to do something about ovarian cancer.
Oh, I forgot to mention….. In addition to completing the two courses described in the blog, I have to qualify as a volunteer with Swedish Hospital (to which the Rivkin Center is attached.) This involves filling out a fairly hefty questionnaire. I just returned from the Post Office with the questionnaire in hand, and a quick glance through it shows that:
ReplyDeleteI can’t volunteer if I am a felon – especially if I am on death row.
I can’t volunteer if I currently suffer from various infectious diseases, such as – I think –leprosy.
I must aver that I have been inoculated against a whole host of diseases, many of which I didn’t know existed and some of which I suspect hadn’t been invented when I was getting my childhood shots.
I have been reading lately about various kinds of prokaryotes; simple single-celled life forms like bacteria. Some of these guys form colonies. It appears that the presence of one of these tine creatures leads to two, then four, etc. That is, the very existence of this kind of prokaryote presupposes and entails proliferation. Kind of like some of the medical bureaucracies I seem to be dealing with.
We don't care about your GPA, just take the tests and get to work. Students always complain about the assigents.
ReplyDeleteHindustan Times: only 5.2% of Indian PhD graduates (US educated) return to India to work. Think of that the next you meet an Indian MD or researcher.
DeleteI know at one such personally, and we are lucky to have him.
Delete