Things I've Learned from Working in a Hospital

1. Not everyone wearing a white coat is a doctor. In fact, if she looks like a 22-year-old who just graduated with a BA in psychology, she probably is. But be nice to her, just to be on the safe side-- she could be your internist!

2. A lab coat makes a fabulous modest addition to any hospital worker's wardrobe. Or any wardrobe. Seriously. Suppose you find yourself in the following situation: you woke up late (on purpose) because you refuse to wake up before 6:00 am, even though you need to be at work at 7:30 am and your work is technically an hour and a half away from home. You throw on some clothes in the semi-darkness, which you picked out the night before, also in the semi-darkness, and rush out the door to work. Then suppose you have an awkward interaction with a subject in which your pretty sure he's not looking at your face, even though you're wearing a shirt that is only an inch below you collar bones, so you go to the bathroom to check out your outfit and discover that your shirt is actually see-through. In this totally hypothetical situation, what do you do? Grab a lab coat. Spilled marinara sauce all over your sweater? Lab coat. Cold in your office because they expect it to be warm in Chicago in the summer? Lab coat.

Now all I have to do is figure out how to answer the people who stop me in the hall to ask for directions to radiology. I always want to respond, "Why don't you ask a grown-up?" Oops... that might be me!