stole wh out from the library for lunch today in houston hall, which is the second worst place to eat on campus after au bon pain. in 30 degree weather, though, propinquity starts becoming a serious consideration. he's starting his clinicals soon, and is saying precisely the same things that jh was a couple of years ago, chiefly that he's afraid he's going to kill someone. i'm starting to think that med students really mean this, and it's not just one of those things that they say. way back in combat medic course, we used to joke about screwing up cases quite a lot, and yet somehow, i don't think left us any less prepared. a lot of us did end up facing patients in fairly critical condition, and it didn't matter that we were flip about things in ulu pandan, all that mattered was that we believed it could happen. so: to WH, and all clinical folks out there (and eventually, to myself, when i have to start dealing with people who want to leap onto the train tracks): worrying about it probably doesn't change a thing (or, to look at it another way, no one's going to die in the OR because you didn't worry enough). groucho marx, i think, had the idea, when he famously said: "afraid? me? a man who's licked his weight in wild caterpillars?"