First work anxiety dream in Europe!
I was attending a series of talks by grad
students and upon arriving discovered no one had organized the pizza
lunch. I grabbed the phone to call Zeek's pizza and discovered
we were in a room on the other side of campus not serviced by the pizza
delivery. The department head (an actually super-competent female PI in reality) said I should
just run out and grab it from the north Capital Hill location. I raised my voice a tiny amount and
explained how that would take well over 45 minutes after I’d walked to my car,
driven there and back, in traffic. She
shrugged and said then we’ll just drop it.
No, I insisted. I will just miss
the talks.
Halfway to my
car I got lost in the health sciences building (this could really happen actually) and had to ask a burgundy-scrubs-clad group of medical students which direction was west.
I finally emerged from the building and
found myself on the wrong side of campus, still half a mile from the car park.
I glanced at the program to estimate whether I'd get back in time for any of the talks and realized that the names were all of second year
postdoctoral fellows and my name was listed halfway down the itinerary as a
presenter.
I began to panic, mapping out
how to get to my lab, grab computer and memory stick, write the talk, while driving to the pizza parlor and back.
I opened my eyes in my friend’s
guest room in Bordeaux, two hours into my post-french-lunch siesta,
simultaneously relieved to not be delinquent and disappointed that I
had not found a better solution to my dilemma than the cheater of waking up.
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