[LMB] (no subject)

[Paige Kalika]

From: "Katrina Allis" <k.m.allis at gmail.com>

> Being one of this younger generation, I felt old when a new co-worker 
> asked
> me if I had children.  My initial response was that I'm too young for
> children*.

I've had that moment with my patients' parents.  I've only just managed 
managed to avoid breezily telling them that oh, no- I'm _much_ too young to 
have kids!  When you consider that I'm still 28 (and have been having this 
conversation for over three years) and that most of the parents near my age 
have at least three or four kids... yeah.  Could be awkward.

And on other days, I have to insist that, yes, I really am old enough to be 
a doctor, I swear.  This might not come up so often if I didn't wear cartoon 
t-shirts and scrub bottoms when on call.  (Hey, if I can get you to take me 
seriously in that get up, I must be doing something right.)

Actually, those were the good old days.  I could get away with that when I 
was a happy-go-lucky pediatric resident.  Now, as a stressed and cranky 
pedatric neuro fellow (cranky mostly because of the year-long exile to adult 
neurology), it probably wouldn't go over as well.  Although I'm still very 
tempted... eh.  I'll save it for next year when I'm back in the wonderful 
world of pediatrics.

Wow.  To bring my digression back around to the actual subject, I just 
realized that I have been with the list through nearly all of college, all 
of med school, all of residency, and now one month of fellowship.  It's not 
all that long in terms of years (although it's more than a third of my 
life), but in terms of maturity... definitely.  (Although I may smile and 
roll my eyes at myself if I re-read this in another ten or twenty years.)

Paige (who might not be able to quite fit into her college pants, but can 
definitely cram the same number of parentheticals into an e-mail, if not 
more)