Carpal Tunnel

One important aspect of a yearbook (that I rarely put much thought into) is people's names. I guess it makes sense that we'd want to know the names of who we're looking at. We don't put any captions in our yearbook, trusting that people who care will know who is in the shot. We do, however, have names by everyone's 'mug shot.' 'Portrait' or 'head shot' whatever you want to call it. Here, for example, is mine from orientation first week of med school back in '02 (That's said ought-two, by the way. I'm being quaint girl today.)

Doo-de-dooo. I lost my train of thought. Did you know that Mark Twain had a son? Yeah, they called him Choo-Choo. Choo-Choo Twain.

Okay! There it is. Train of thought. Names. In my mind, the names and pictures just magically appear as if placed there by lucky little leprechauns. (What else does that Lucky Charms guy do in his spare time if not putting name/picture combos into yearbooks. It just makes good sense.)

Alas, I learned differently a while ago. No little leprechauns. Which, in a way is good, as leprechauns are frightening little nasties.

Good grief, this is a boring story.

Short version: I have to type in the first and last name of every med student, grad student, PA student, house officer and faculty member at this institution. There are a lot of names. A lot. So many names.

It is interesting to see the trends, though. For instance, there are at least two people named "Mandeep" here. Who'd of thunk it? And the name "Michael" appears to be one of the most popular names around for guys. There are a lot of really kind of fun names, too. Like... well. I can't actually tell you any of them, as I'm sure that would be breaking some sort of privacy act. There are some good ones, though.

I don't mind doing this sort of task. It is always a little refreshing to have a mindless, repetitive thing to do for a few hours. Like resetting the brain or something.

But now my wrist hurts! I'm sure it is partly due to the fact that I don't type correctly. I'm okay at hitting the keys with my correct fingers, but for some reason, I've only ever used the "Shift" key on the left side of the keyboard. It doesn't matter much for little things, but this is not too little. Go ahead - try typing a capital "A" using the left shift key. See? Awkward, isn't it? You just shouldn't do it that way! I'm trying to break myself of the habit now. Heaven knows, I've got enough typing to do to practice!!!

Names, names, names.