Meeting Ira Glass

Ira Glass came to the Ann Arbor Borders today to promote the This American Life DVD (in stores now!). I, of course, was beyond excited; meeting Ira Glass is the equivalent of that "Leave Britney ALONE!" kid from YouTube meeting the lovely (but deeply troubled) Miss Spears. After all, I had recently listened to a years' worth of This American Life on long journey to Pakistan and felt that in that short span of time I knew Ira.

He always seemed so genuinely interested in people's stories; there wasn't this objective distance that many journalists convey when dealing with their subjects. On the show, he also seemed so perceptive - finding a universal meaning in the most mundane, yet entertaining, of events. Now, of course, there is always that element of distrust wherein public figures rarely match their on-screen persona. For instance, the perky Rachel Ray from 30 Minute Meals seems as if she's a chirpy girl-next-door, but she was recently caught in an alleged diva moment when she demanded Starbucks coffee on the set of her Dunkin' Donuts commercial.

He did an hour-long Q&A session, in which I learned that Ira Glass was even wittier and nicer than on the radio. When he talked about work with a creative element, I was thisclose to dropping out of medical school and pitching idiosyncratic stories to This American Life for the rest of my working career. And so, Abby, Farrah, Sophie and I excitedly stood in line to get our DVDs signed. Weirdly, we were given a post-it note and told that we could have an inscription of our choice. Farrah and Abby had cute, witty ideas, and I literally suffered from a case of performance anxiety. Finally, I settled on, "Mariam, love the blog! Ira Glass."

The blog comment proved to be a very worthy segueway when Ira Glass asked me the address to our worthy website and told me to write it down for him. This was probably the highlight of everyone's evening. I then told him: "Wow you're even better in real life than on the radio," which I'm sure had this creepy element to it since it's not everyday that short, brown girls in medical school give Ira Glass comments that linger on borderline harassment.

Nevertheless, Ira Glass, if you are reading this, we love your show, and you are not a diva in the manner of Rachel Ray at all. And I literally talk about the show everyday with Farrah and Abby (in fact, in the past month, I think it's been the only topic of conversation). And below are links of our favorite blogs (if you feel that there is a story idea for This American Life within the depths of our humble blog):

Mariam:
Foreign Parents
It's Never Over: Ira Glass and Me
The Dark Side of the Gym
Studying is Serious Business

Farrah:
My Torrid Affair with Haute Couture
Hallway Etiquette
The 3-Hole Punch is the Water Cooler of Medical School
Oh, that Kayak, It's just something I built last weekend with my bare hands

Mariam and Farrah joint venture:
How to be Girly: Lesson 3: Anatomy of a Facebook Profile

--By Mariam, who is overly excited by this whole Ira Glass encounter and will probably relay this to individuals who a) don't care and b) don't even know what station NPR is on with a zealous animation that will make it seem as if she was Plaxico Buress or Eli Manning last Sunday.

The Lawn Mower Stripper Technique

In my Fundamentals of Clinical Practice class, I discovered there is a lot more technique involved in the physical exam than I ever anticipated. I recently had a lecture on the most awkward of subjects entitled: Male and Female Genital Exams, and Breast Exams. I'm not even going to touch on the first part of that lecture, and needless to say, I've pretty much eliminated proctology and OBGYN as career choices. When it came to breast exams, it turns out there are several different techniques to ensure that no potential hazardous lumps go unnoticed. Several techniques were described to us: Clock Pattern, Wedge Pattern, Swirl Pattern, and Lawn Mower Stripping. Lawn Mower Stripping was emphasized as the ideal choice. I could have been mistaken, but it really sounded like "Lawn Mower Stripping" and the lawn mower part is definitely descriptive. You just go up and down as if mowing a lawn in straight lines, only you're not mowing a lawn - you're examining a breast.

I have physical exam lab the day after lecture. After sweating in my white coat for an hour, I was the last student to perform the exam. There were four students, one standardized patient, and one instructor in every lab room. Everybody watches you do your exam which is a little nerve racking. The instructor kept on correcting my hand position to make lumps and irregularities more obvious. She kindly told me, "Now, it's called the lawn mower technique, and you know when you're mowing a lawn you want to keep your lines straight. The same idea applies here, so you don't miss anything." I nervously replied with, "I don't mow lawns. Well actually, nobody let's me mow the lawn anymore because last time I did, my sister said the lines were too crooked." (This is a true story - my sister sent pictures of the lawn to my dad to show off how dysfunctional I am) We all had a nice little chuckle, even the lady with her top off had a laugh... awkward!

--By Farrah, who's going to meet Ira Glass tomorrow, and wants to ask him if he is willing to switch jobs

A Blog in Honor of Super Tuesday

A couple of weeks ago, Slate had an interesting video about how Hillary Clinton was like Tracey Flick, the overzealous, uptight gunner from Tom Perotta's novel Election and Alexander Payne's 1999 film, which I absolutely love. Election is a satire about the American election process represented within the microcosm of student council elections within a Nebraskan high school. Tracey Flick, played by Reese Witherspoon in the film, is a type-A neurotic - you knew her in high school - she was on the field hockey team, student council, Spanish club, NHS, and the choir. She was bound for Harvard, but no one really liked her all that much. Teachers were annoyed at her know-it-all attitude as she aggressively waved her hand when a teacher asked question, and she also grade grubbed. Below is said video:



Anyway, Hillary is compared to Tracey Flick, and I completely agree with this analysis. She shows very little emotion and speaks about policy with a robot-like efficiency. She's that girl in high school who was valedictorian, and the teachers continually spoke about her brilliance. However, when you talked to her, you realized she was dry as toast. She didn't have a compelling personality or an ounce of creativity but could churn out lab reports and English papers with a machine-like diligence.

In contrast, Barack Obama is the popular football star in high school. He was that kid who came from an unstable background, but he had that Midas touch. It seemed like everything came to him with such ease. He got decent grades without trying, and he had this great, sparkling personality. Everyone slapped his back after the big football game in the hallway. All the teachers swooned whenever he talked in class because he was so cute! And to top it off, while others were seething with jealousy over Barack's charmed life, he was protected from the evil eye because he was such a nice guy and not an ass tool in the slightest. Now of course, this may not be at all how public high schools in small town America are like, because I went to Carlisle, where there were no clear-cut dichotomies between popular and the uncool, but it is my artistic attempt to approximate what public education offers.

Anyway, choosing between Barack and Hillary is ultimately a reflection of one's personality. Are you going to choose Barack and be sucked in by his charisma and continual affirmations of "transformative politics," and blatantly ignore the fact that he has had a mere four years of experience in the U.S. Senate? Or are you the high school minority who realizes that Hillary, despite all her prickliness, is a capable politician, but can't win the hearts of people due to her lack of charm? And sadly (or maybe happily?), I am a typical high schooler at heart, and I can only see Barack's star power with his exotic Indonesian primary school education, and I see Hillary as that sad loser in those ugly, ill-fitting power suits and her cutthroat willingness of doing anything to get to the White House.

--By Mariam, who thinks that Huckabee looks eerily like Kevin Spacey.

One of these things is not like the other.

Do you remember on Sesame Street when Big Bird would say, "One of these things is not like the other, can you guess which one?" Then they would present you with three toasters and an orangutan, and you would happily yell out, "The monkey! The monkey!"



Well, I was sending an e-mail to a friend (shout out to Tor, woot woot!) about planning another friend's (woot woot AL!) bachlorette party, and these were the sponsored links along the e-mail.

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Butt Acne
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What I'm wondering is why Proactive doesn't start marketing to the probably 100s of people that suffer from butt acne. I want Jessica Simpson to come on TV and tell me, "For years I suffered from the embarrassing effects of butt acne. And it was just awful because I was always on the road showing off my butt, eating M&Ms, and being stressed out. They had to touch up all of my ass shots until I found Proactive. Just three steps a day, and I'm on my way to clear and smooth butt." I bet people will be super excited when it's easier than ever to tell others to "kiss my ass!"

--By Farrah, who is too scared to go to any of these sponsored links provided by gmail because she is way vanilla for heelsontheceiling.com

The Writers' Strike and Me

The Writers' Strike has been going on since November, and at first, I barely felt the effects. After all, my DVR was filled to the max with new episodes of really neat shows. It was an all-you-can-eat TV buffet back then.

Now in the winter of our discontent, when it is too cold to leave the house and engage with human beings due to an asthmatic bronchospasms induced by the frigid, Ohio air, the Writers' Strike starts to hit me hard. My TV watching habits are a shell of their former selves. I have started to waver between watching the debased lowbrow entertainment that caters to the "lowest common denominator" and the relatively highbrow (for Middle America at least) - CNN.

For instance, I realized things were getting dire when I started to watch the new season of One Tree Hill, an absolutely shitty teen show that is filmed in my native North Carolina. It stars a skeezy star, Chad Michael Murray, whose marriage to his costar ended after a mere six months because of an ill-fated dalliance with Paris Hilton. Now dear blog reader, one may be wondering why One Tree Hill is so horrific; does the fact that Keven Federline (i.e. the former Mr. Britney Spears) guest-starred as a rapper-singer in the vain of CrazyTown last night make it any clearer? What is happening to me, I thought, but I continued watching because I was that desperate.

I also started subscribing to multiple movie channels (I have nearly 12 channels devoted entirely to B-list movies). Before the Writers' Strike, I used to be a relative movie snob. I liked obscure, indie foreign films and despised mainstream comedies for their crass commercialism and their subtle endorsement of bourgeois values. I am no longer that person; for instance, last night, I watched Night at the Museum with Ben Stiller. Although Ricky Gervais was hilarious, I recall that that movie was nominated for a Razzie award for Worst Movie. I also watched John Tucker Must Die, a crap movie starring Hollywood douche Jesse Metcalf. Sample dialogue:
Heather: John and I belong together. He's the varsity captain, and after all, I AM the head cheerleader.

At the same time, though, the strike has reawakened my civic interests as I watch CNN's coverage of primary/caucus season obsessively. Who will win South Carolina? Nevada? Primary season is like a sporting event, as one roots for a favorite team team. The tickers at the bottom of the screen showing the percent of precincts reporting is mesmerizing. The political mudslinging is really cool, too - did Hillary Clinton, the Tracey Flick of the election, just call Obama, America's own popular, football player with a charismatic smile, a drug user? I have also started to find Anderson Cooper really dreamy and imagine what it would be like if we were married (most likely an intellectual free-for-all as we trekked through the Amazon to inform ignorant Americans about obscure, environmental travesties).

I have also started to watch ESPN. I am about two days away from watching Sports Center (I'm not there yet though!). For example, right now, in lieu of Gossip Girl and its fantabulous wardrobe, I am watching a sweaty Tyler Hansborough in an unfashionably shiny jersey in the Georgia Tech - North Carolina game. Tomorrow I might even watch Nadal or the Man Who Made Tennis Boring, Federer, at the Australian Open. I have really changed, and perhaps even, grown, as a person. It is a strange feeling.

--By Mariam, who really did not enjoy today's presentation on fiscal responsibility at school today.

From Patient to Proctor

Anytime you make a fool of yourself, you are bound to relive its horror until the end of time. For most of us, our first encounter with a patient, even a standardized patient, is awkward to say the least. Whether you laughed out loud when you heard the word "impotence," or you tried to keep a serious face when the answer to your question "What brings you in today?" was "My neighbor Sheila's car," you gained a memory that cannot be erased. I can still vividly remember my first patient interview from last year. I pompously thought asking a few questions will be easy. When I actually sat down for my interview in front of my peers, my voice went several octaves higher than my normal speaking voice, and I used the clever phrase "um" several times in a row.

I've gotten much better at interviewing patients and consciously lowering my voice to a mature alto. Despite my improvement, I'm still new enough at the task that I easily get nervous and speak in my high pitched little girl voice. Although we're looking at these interviews as real-life practice, our standardized patients are just playing a role. They are terribly good at their jobs, and when one tells you, "I'm having problems pleasing my wife in bed," you believe him. We're not living in a big city, and since our standardized patients are picked from the staff and community around us, we inevitably encounter them in our real life.

Student often comment on the Nazi-like rule over our testing. Those who arrive 15 minutes early get lectured about the importance of being on time, while those who arrive one minute before the test must wait in the back to be checked in before starting. In the stress of awaiting our exams, I'm not sure if anybody notices that most of our test proctors are also our standardized patients. They are all there: the alcoholic church lady, the impotent chemist, and the raving old woman who would grease her legs with something called elephant ears (?!?). I know that these proctors were just playing a role, but I can't really get my first memory of them out of my mind. Although I'm always going to look at them as the raving impotent alcoholics, I wonder if they remember their interviewers and look at me as the med student with the sing-song little girl voice. They never show judgment when I'm in the room, nervous about my own skills, for which I am grateful, so I try my best not to judge them for the roles they are assigned to play. Though now that we actually have to touch these standardized patients to practice physical exams, I hope they use somebody other than our proctors. Otherwise, before tests instead of focusing on the facts I have to remember, when I receive my scantron I will be thinking, "It's the heroine addict with a hairy mole on his back... gross."

--By Farrah, who now wants to name her band My Square Heart so it can go on bumper stickers as "MY[ ]<3"

What I Did on My Winter Vacation Part I

Remember in grade school when everyone did a report on what they did over summer/winter break? Since I went to Carlisle, those reports were very exotic -i.e. "I went to St. Thomas!" "I went on a tour of Europe with all my friends and a man named Nobel Marshall, and my Gucci watch fell into the Thames river!" (a la Lyz B.). Since I was a foreign kid, our vacations consisted of going back to a "developing country," Pakistan and dealing with the harsh, uncomfortable living conditions there.

Looking at property with Ayyaz and Shahla!

And so, this past break, I went to Pakistan after four, long years. I was anxious about my trip. I had just recently finished my Immunity and Infection blog so I was super paranoid about the exotic diseases that were endemic there. What if I got tapeworm?

Things didn't start out well for me. On the day of my departure, a huge blizzard hit Toledo. It was nearly impossible to get to the airport. My taxi driver was an old man of seventy. This was going to be the guy to navigate the dangerous, snow-covered streets and carry my 50 lb suitcases? Alas, I made it to JFK.

My dad and I flew on Emirates Airlines, which was fairly pimp - much like the U.A.E. - needlessly flashy and conspicuous. My throat started to hurt, though, mid-flight, and I started to sneeze continuously. My dad had taken an entire Ambien and alas was little help in providing me with a diagnosis.
"Dad, I'm getting influenza!"
"Mariam, you have acid-reflux," my dad said in a drug-induced sleep haze. I had suffered from Ashlee Simpson disease for nearly 10 years, and I knew that this feeling of general malaise was not GERD.

We finally reached Lahore, Pakistan after 18 hours. It had been a long flight, and I was anxious to get out of my smelly, plane clothes. However, there was no sign of our 3 suitcases at the baggage claim. Then, we waited in a small office filled with scary, aggressive, desi men, who kept saying, "Welcome to Pakistan!" in response to my anguish over the lost luggage.

One boy of about 20 started chatting my dad and I up, and I thought in my head, I will impress him with my super premium Urdu-speaking skills. He won't even realize I'm from America! Tragically, this boy started to use big words I didn't comprehend. I stared at him blankly, and my dad translated. So much for blending in with the natives.

We finally headed to my nana's house after spending three hours in a claustrophobic office reporting our lost luggage. I didn't get my luggage until four days later, and I had to wear my only outfit - a Carolina sweatshirt that my mom had bought me from the little boys' section. All the while, I was filled up to my ears with snot and had developed a hacking cough that made me sound like a pack-a-day septuagenarian with emphysema. Attractive. My mother, in a desperate attempt to make me look presentable to relatives I had not seen in four years, told me put on some lipstick. Unfortunately, there was no hope for that ill-fitting Carolina sweatshirt and my non-matching Uggs.

Pictures of Jinnah everywhere!


--Part II coming soon: Jumping through bureaucratic hoops to get my luggage, and a surprise at the Karachi Sheraton.

--By Mariam, who is really upset by the New Hampshire primary results and has been awake since 5 AM due to jet lag.