Paging Dr. Madden
“Comma,” I said, holding out my hand while keeping my eyes on the patient on the operating table.
Without a word, the surgical assistant pressed the object into my hand, and I carefully inserted it into the proper place.
“Citation,” I held out my hand, and the assistant placed the new object on my outstretched palm.
We continued this way for a few hours – stitching up loose ends, removing portions that may have been detrimental, and inserting apostrophes, semicolons, and the occasional period. Just when it seemed like we had everything under control, something went wrong.
“He’s flatlining!” I yelled, glaring at the ringing EEG monitor. “Get me the defibrillator!”
The assistant quickly grabbed the tool and shoved it in my direction.
“Clear!” I slammed the defibrillator down on the patient’s chest, and two hundred volts of electricity surged through his body.
His eyes shot open and he looked around, completely dazed. “Wha?”
“Roy, get up.” I said, shoving his shoulder again for emphasis.
Roy looked up at me, his eyes red. “Did I fall asleep?”
“Yeah. You might want to hurry up and finish that essay. All you have left to do is the conclusion.”
Roy rubbed his eyes and looked at the papers strewn all over the hallway floor. His edited essay sat on one side of him and his sources sat on the other. “Dude, aren’t you tired?”
“Sure,” I glanced at the time on my computer. “It’s almost four a.m. But you need to finish this paper.”
“Okay,” he nodded as he went back to work.
I smiled to myself. I may not want to go into the medical field, but I had been playing doctor all week.
During this school year, I’ve watched my editing skills grow inside the class – as I studied the Harbrace for Comp 101 and 102 – and outside the class – as I helped my friends with the essays they were struggling to complete. One by one, they would show up at my door, convinced that being an English major was all the credibility I needed to help them improve their various papers.
As much as I enjoyed helping my friends, I wasn’t expecting what happened this week to occur. With research papers and final essays due either this week or the next, EVERYONE suddenly wanted my help all at once.
I soon found myself nursing wounded essays back to health, handing out prescriptions for Harbrace chapters, and even helping writers “push” to deliver the perfect thesis statement. I was on call 24/7 – no time was off limits. With calls for help arriving constantly, I found myself assisting my friends by day and trying to complete my own homework and research paper by night.
It was mentally exhausting – but I loved every second of it.
Before this week, I had been asking myself what good writing would do in the world. The way I saw it, if we all crashed on a deserted island writing would be the least useful tool for survival. Medical skills would be necessary to help the injured, science and mathematical skills would be necessary to use the environment for shelter and rescue, and even business skills would be necessary to allow for some sort of management and/or organization. Writing about it all wouldn’t really help anyone.
I know it’s an extreme scenario, but these are the things that I think about.
This week showed me, however, that we all have a place somewhere. For some, it’s slaving away in an operating room, trying to save lives, and for others, it’s helping those people learn to write an essay so that they can pass Comp and save those lives one day.
Little by little, Southern is teaching me that no matter what anyone does – regardless of how miniscule it may seem – they have a place in society. We all fit in somewhere and if we don’t all work together, then society will fall apart.
Believe it or not, we really are the future.
No pressure.