It is amazing how interesting the pattern on the floor can become when you stare at it for an extended period of time.
It's Intern Week.
That is why I am staring at the floor.
Intern-Week actually spans over two weeks, but Intern-Fortnight sounds stupid so I refer to this dreadful period of time as Intern-Week. Or, actually, I could just call it Hell-Week. I deem both terms appropriate.
Anyway, I'm staring at the floor because the interns are running a workshop. Its actually going quite successfully, considering everyone is participating. Except me, of course. I am staring at the floor.
I have picked my intern already. Every intern gets assigned a patient they have to analyse over the course of their placement. Every year I pity the poor fool who thinks they are going to be my best friend by the end of the two weeks. The first year the poor girl gave up after three days of me point-blank ignoring her and didn't return for the rest of the placement. Last year the insolent boy stayed the entire time and tried everything from insulting me to begging with me to interact with him. He failed the assignment; I overheard Markman talking to him about it. It amused me a great deal to hear her berating him for calling me stupid.
My intern this year has spent the last hour trying to make eye-contact with me but I have only been making eye contact with the floor, so he's not getting very far. It took him a while to figure out who I was because I refused to wear the name tag. Everyone else was wearing those idiotic speed-dating nametags that boldly stated: 'Hi! My name is....' There was no way I was allowing that sticker to come anywhere near me. There were three reasons behind my reluctance to wear the name tag. Firstly, they look ridiculous. There was only one exception to this rule and that was Chanhee. He looked ridiculously cute instead. When Markman gave him the sticker he obediently stuck it to his shirt straightaway. He hadn't worked himself up to defying Markman as openly as I did. I, on the other hand, scrunched it up immediately and tossed it under Kevin's chair as soon as I got it. Markman didn't react in the slightest and simply moved on to the next person.
The second reason I refused to wear the name tag was for entertainment purposes. I thought it would be much more interesting and amusing for the interns to have to figure out who we were themselves. The third reason was along the lines of self-preservation. I am being hunted. They are searching for me. I wasn't going to wear a nametag that told them who I was. I'm not a fucking idiot. Man, seriously.
An intern was moving around the circle handing out pieces of paper and pencils. When she got to me, I ignored her. She was quite thrown for a long moment. Everyone else leading up to me had accepted the paper and pencil graciously. She wasn't expecting someone to be uncooperative. She stood there dumbly, staring at me, still holding the paper out to me even though it was clear I wasn't going to accept it. I wondered whether she would just dump it in my lap and move on or whether she would just skip me. She did neither. She stammered and faltered and looked around desperately at her colleagues for advice. Finally, Chanhee felt sorry for her and accepted the materials on my behalf. He set them down under my chair and the girl took that as incentive to start moving again.
The aim of this first exercise was to write down ten bad things in our lives, or ten things that worried us or a combination of both. After we had written down the ten things we would go off with our intern to discuss them and create ways to overcome them.
Fuck this shit.
No one was wearing a name tag with Hyunjoon on it, and I was the only person without a name tag. Despite this, it took my intern a shocking amount of time to figure out who I was. However, once he finally singled me out through the process of elimination, he came over to me.
