Body of Work

Today I woke up and thought, dammit, I have a lot of work to do. Next week is Spring Party Weekend at Colgate University, and as a twenty-one-year old, I naturally feel compelled to start drinking tomorrow, without stopping until the following Sunday. But I have a series of things in my way. Namely, my thesis. There are other assignments, but they don't seem nearly as threatening. 

So I had an idea. It was about 11:30 when I finally had this revelation, fairly late in the day. And my body shook with misery. I didn't want to take my medication. I wanted to finish my thesis. In my head it isn't really that difficult to see me finishing it. I've done the majority of the research I will actually have to do. I've read some thirty scholarly papers on communication in primary care and the health field in general. What I have to do now, what is really standing in my way, is getting down to organizing and actually writing out the captivating narratives that will distinguish a Writing and Rhetoric thesis from a final paper written for any other discipline. I've always wanted to get a large piece of paper and scribble all my ideas over it, slowly pulling them together. But this is a lot harder to do than one would imagine, because it is hard to erase pencil on paper when the paper is huge and you've placed it in the middle of your living room on the bumpy carpet (I have attempted this before). My whiteboard is erasable, and it is huge, but it isn't GINORMOUS. My body, however, has a ton of surface area. I just calculated it, and it comes out to 1.95 squared meters of skin. I'm also in the 98th percentile for height and 37th percentile for weight of people my height! I am skinny! According to this random internet calculator. 

Irregardless, I started drawing on myself with the big giant magical sharpie I've been keeping in my backpack along with my little dinosaur since I decided that a fundamental theme of my personality is persistent mischievousness. Also, it was a good excuse to spend a large amount of my day in my bra and underwear. Baby, it's the weekend.

After I had written all over myself, around 2 PM, I discovered that it was really warm and nice outside, so I threw on one of my favorite summer dresses, a light blueish green affair that I had bought from Target for my cousin's wedding.

Leonardo DaVinci and I have something in common. An ability to write mirror reverse. I employed this on my stomach so that I could look at myself (which I do a lot anyway) and read interesting notes to myself. "Body of Art" is the title that appears write underneath my bra. I also decided to label some anatomical features of myself, as well. I wrote Pleura over my left lung.

For some reason I decided my belly button needed a little friend. It's a female doctor! Also I didn't feel like writing mirror reverse all over myself, so I laid out signs telling people/just myself where one could expect to find normal writing. You can read the message above the arrow as "ARMS UNTIL LAND Mirror," but it really says, "Mirror LAND UNTIL ARMS." Haha, just like if you were driving.

BODY OF WORK. Heart.

I got a little excited about making arrows and mirror writing, so this is the last sign I made, clearly saying: "WOAH REVERSE REVERSE." S's for some reason are always hard. You think you've got it, but nope. Doesn't matter how many of them you do.

Dated and signed for history.

The most spacious tract of land, my upper thighs, were also the easiest to write on.

My left calf led to the most groundbreaking insight. What was my "BASEline FOUNDATION"? What was my "PERSONAL ETHOS"? (See below) 

Once I decided that I wanted to make my ethos the focus of the paper, I had to figure out where my mountains of research would come in.

The outlines of my personal stories appeared on my right calf. Here, I decide that I should talk about the time my Dad came home and said he wished he could only do appendectomies and not have to worry about anything else.

The reasons why I want to become a doctor, in two parts.

You can see that without a mirror, "WOAH" becomes "MOVH"? Hahahaha.

Sexy leg.

"STORYTELLING" is the new name of my right leg. In blue you can see the start of the epic Star Trek quote, "SHAKA WHEN THE WALLS FELL." Good episode, deals with how people communicate through shared experiences and allusions.

I also wrote L and R on my two shoulders because I realized that I had completely messed up my coordinate system earlier. I've also labeled my clavicle, probably one of the sexier things around my head. My hand is covering it up, but I also wrote "Hello Ideas" above my bra line. I think it was motivational.

One of the first things I wrote, an arrow pointing to my head labeled tentatively with "AUTO?" How am I autonomous and how would this affect me as both a doctor and a patient? The doctor-patient relationship debates deal with autonomy quite a lot. A quarter to a third of all the papers I read about health care dealt with the topic.

WRITER!

One of my favorite motivational tools:

"YOU CAN'T BATHE until..."

"...you've written your 4 chapters!"

 Done and done. I did write 4 chapters. I feel very accomplished. The frats were playing music, and by chance they started playing my favorite song for the day and probably the weekend, Do Ya Like by Childish Gambino. I ran with abandon across the field to Taylor Lake where I laid down on a bench and continued to work on my thesis, finishing a second chapter. Eventually some freshmen Ultimate players walked by playing Frisbee Golf. I followed them up the hill, still barefoot and still covered in Sharpie. Got dirty in the process. Epic and fun. Great day. 

And now I have a bathe waiting for me... Best day.