impeccable

on monday, my sister got back from france where she had spent 3 months serving as an au pair to a very well-off family. her duties mainly centered around entertaining and caring for morgane, a 3-year old french girl. apparently, the little one is pretty precocious when it comes to language, and will throw phrases into her conversation like, “impeccable”, but in french, which is even cuter.

she heads back to france in a couple of weeks – to the riviera city of nice, more specifically – and i can’t help but think, damn, is she lucky. she will be teaching french students english, but only for something like 12 hours per week! and yes, i know that creating lesson plans will be time consuming, but even if she spent 28 hours per week (that’s four hours every day) working on them, it still only adds up to 40. which means she has the rest of the time to explore france, find herself, and do whatever the hell she wants.

i never got to find myself. i just plunked myself out of one school and into another. i wish doctors (or phD students) could take sabbaticals in which they were able to explore whatever they wanted, be it the world or – well, whatever. i want to love my job, but i don’t want my job to be my life. at the same time, i want to do a good job — a really good job — at whatever it is i end up trying to do.

this might all be impossible.

i’m getting a little panicky about time-management these days. i’ve been writing these lists of stuff to do, articles to read, problems to work — and it’s a lot harder to fit in the day than i thought. i think it’s all a matter of finding a routine that works, but i haven’t found it yet. and i need to stop watching trashy tv. except the real world. and newlyweds. because apparently i’m still 17 years old.

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in class today:

PROFESSOR: we are now going to handle clearance as it is performed by the kidneys. and let me just say, compared to the liver, this is really a pain in the ass — or more appropriately, a pain in the back! heh heh.

ANNOYING, ANNOYING BOY WHO ALWAYS SITS IN THE FRONT AND MAKES KISS-UP COMMENTS: yeah, because — ha — people don’t usually get pain in the, uhh, backside. it’s so much more often the back!

PROFESSOR: [stares at ANNOYING BOY incredulously]

when you’re not even with-it enough to get your aging professor’s stupid jokes, and yet you STILL think you’re clever enough to make a comment, it’s just sad. people like that make me want to bang my head against the wall.