in the Student Lounge

We got out of my Ambulatory Care class a little earlier than usual, so I went to the Student Lounge to kill some time. The Student Lounge is an interesting place. It has four round tables, two computers, and a whole variety of outdated magazines. More interesting than the place, however, is the conglomeration of people that frequent the place. The HCA department is very small in comparison to other departments, so invariably, the same people come trotting in and out every day, and it doesn’t take long to be on a first-name basis with them—especially when we have the same unpopular professor in common.

I was surprised to find one of the Public Health students sitting in the lounge. Katie was one that had been in my Community Health class last semester. I had never really talked with her for any length of time, but I recognized her as one who had suffered through that class along with me. So I went and sat with her. She was studying for a test coming up later that day, but we, along with several others, began to chit-chat. Kevonna started talking about how she just doesn’t have any more “mo-jo.” I, of course, being the white girl I am, didn’t have any idea what “mo-jo” is. I gathered from the ensuing conversation, however, that “mo-jo” is, in fact, short for “motivation.” Ohh…

So then Katie began telling us about the motivational conversation she had with herself in the car this morning. She is a Senior and is just ready to be finished, I think. Her conversation went something like this, “Katie, you CAN do this, and you WILL do this.” There were some other things she said, but I can’t remember them. She says she has to do that quite a bit.

I had helped Kevonna in our biostats lab yesterday, and somehow, that became the next topic of conversation. Kevonna declared that she can only understand stuff when I—not the professor—explain it to her, and, in fact, she wishes she were just like me. She seems to think I’ve got it all together… (if she only knew). Anyway, I knew that was just Kevonna talking, but I was a bit surprised when Katie chimed in and pronounced ME “the Most Interesting Person.” I just laughed at her, but she insisted that she and her friend Lenore have talked about it quite a bit. She said she has told Lenore that she just wishes she were “such an interesting person as [me].” She also said that she just “looooves to listen to me talk.” Astounding! This sentiment apparently all comes from when I had to talk about my community service project during class last semester. I had talked about our medical aid plan and how it works, and if I remember correctly, she did come up to me afterward and told me how interesting she thought it was.

It turns out that Katie is the daughter of a doctor in Glasgow who serves a large Amish population. So I guess that is maybe why she thought it was so interesting. So anyway, after we had established that (despite my modest objections) I was, in fact, the Most Interesting Person, we went on to talk about all manner of Amishness and Mennonitisms. I even gave a little history lesson for her, and on and on we went…until I had to leave for my epidemiology class. I enjoyed hanging out with Katie for the hour.

It was especially pleasant being the Most Interesting Person for the day… even though tomorrow I must go back to being my Plain Old Self.