Life as an Extreme Sport

At Least I Amuse

The Great Grad Hunt

The GRE’s spanked me. I’ll retake ’em in a month… [edit: I’ve been told by several people now that I’m actually at 93% for verbal, and not to bother retaking, the math bit won’t matter… I’m going to see what the official score is, not rough, and make my decision then….]

…but, I am amused, for my writing options? Something I don’t remember, and then a statement saying that “History is pointless to learn from, and we make none of our important decisions today based on it.”

I was born (well, okay, at least have been trained for the last two years) to write that essay! What do you mean I only have 45 minutes? I can’t regurgitate CHID 390 in 45 minutes! Shit! Okay, I can tag Darnton, White and Foucault, that ought to be good enough….and oh! Kanye West and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake! Okay, okay, GO!

Gimme an RX!

...and everything else

Stealing quite liberally (and literally) from Jon Moreno over at the editors blog of the American Journal of Bioethics, a rather eye-opening piece in the New York Times:

T. Lynn Williamson, Ms. Napier’s cheering adviser at Kentucky, says he regularly gets calls from recruiters looking for talent, mainly from pharmaceutical companies. “They watch to see who’s graduating,” he said.

“They don’t ask what the major is,” Mr. Williamson said. Proven cheerleading skills suffice. “Exaggerated motions, exaggerated smiles, exaggerated enthusiasm – they learn those things, and they can get people to do what they want.” …

“There’s a lot of sizzle in it,” said Mr. Webb. “I’ve had people who are going right out, maybe they’ve been out of school for a year, and get a car and make up to $50,000, $60,000 with bonuses, if they do well.” Compensation sometimes goes well into six figures.

And the effect of very attractive salespeople making very unusual sales pitches in what quickly become somewhat flirtatious relationships is obvious:

Still, women have an advantage with male doctors, according to Jamie Reidy, a drug representative who was fired by Eli Lilly this year after writing a book lampooning the industry…

In an interview, Mr. Reidy remembered a sales call with the “all-time most attractive, coolest woman in the history of drug repdom.” At first, he said, the doctor “gave ten reasons not to use one of our drugs.” But, Mr. Reidy added: “She gave a little hair toss and a tug on his sleeve and said, ‘Come on, doctor, I need the scrips.’ He said, ‘O.K., how do I dose that thing?’ I could never reach out and touch a female physician that way.”

Stories abound about doctors who mistook a sales pitch as an invitation to more. A doctor in Washington pleaded guilty to assault last year and gave up his license after forcibly kissing a saleswoman on the lips.

One informal survey, conducted by a urologist in Pittsburgh, Dr. James J. McCague, found that 12 of 13 medical saleswomen said they had been sexually harassed by physicians. Dr. McCague published his findings in the trade magazine Medical Economics under the title “Why Was That Doctor Naked in His Office?”

Hello, double standards! If she makes a move on him, it’s flirty and her job. If he makes a move on her, it’s harassment! Welcome to the new age of “equality”.

Walking the Talk

...and everything else, The Great Grad Hunt

For all my talk of the ease of cold-writing professors (and academics in general) after doing so a few times, it really never does get any easier, in those few seconds before hitting send. But, I cold wrote one professor (at Notre Dame) to ask about some things in his book, and see if he had any general recommendations for places to look at humanistic studies of social network theory. I also wrote a professor I’d been talking to back in May, and then lost contact with because I suck, and dropped off the face of the planet in end-of-quarter panic. Perhaps not the best thing in the world, given that I’d like to study with him in graduate school. Oh well – at least with him I was able to keep a casual, conversation tone, based on our prior mails (which largely focused on who we thought was going to win American Idol).

It’s 3:15am. It’s not Los Angeles. I’m not tired. Except that I am.

Sleep is an elusive beast.