Elizabeth Blackwell is rolling in her grave

When I was in grade school, we did a one week segment on human biology. What I remember about grade school human biology was that our teacher would write a bunch of information on the blackboard and we'd copy it down and then memorize it. By the way, did anyone else really really hate copying things verbatim from the blackboard? It seemed like something we had to do an awful lot.

At the end of the one week, we would select three pieces of paper from a bag of questions, and we'd have to answer those questions in front of the whole class. If we got all three questions right, we'd win a prize. For the girls, the prize was a book about Elizabeth Blackwell, the first female doctor. I had like four of them by the end of grade school.

(FYI: I remember one of the questions was, How many bones are there in the human body? I no longer know the answer to that question. I was smarter when I was six than I am now.)

Anyway, fast forward fifteen years into the future. I am at a med school interview and I get asked a really dumb question by the interviewer: "If you could have dinner with any person, living or dead, who would it be?"

That's such a stupid question. Honestly, if I could have dinner with any person, living or dead, it would probably be my husband. I like having dinner with my husband. If I were having dinner with, like, George Washington, I'd probably be really nervous. And creeped out, because he's dead. I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy the meal very much.

(A better question would have been, if I could FIGHT any person living or dead, who would it be? I'd fight Ghandi.)

So I had no clue what to say, but I remembered that Elizabeth Blackwell book, so I said, "Elizabeth Blackwell. Because she's also a woman in medicine and she understands the obstacles we have to overcome."

Oh man, good answer, Fizzy! Except for the fact that I've spent the last nine years kind of feeling like a tool for saying that. I mean, it was just the lamest, most untrue answer I could have given. I don't actually want to have dinner with Elizabeth Blackwell. I was just trying to come up with an answer that would impress the interviewer. (Although actually, maybe it would be fun to talk to her about arrogant male doctors.)

The worst part is, that med school went and rejected me.