Since starting my clinical internship a few weeks ago I have met a lot of new people. This is good and bad. I enjoy meeting new people and hearing their stories and about their lives but the downside is that then I have to remember more names and recognize more faces which I struggle with. Also being a new person in a small town has been interesting since people know that I’m not from around here and are curious about why in the world I would be here. This has made for some interesting stories. My first Sunday here I attended church with my friend who I am staying with and her roommate Kara. Kara and I were talking after church and someone came up to Kara and asked, “Kara, who is your friend?” Kara replied, “Well, she’s not my friend. Well, she is but she was Jessica’s friend first. She’s just living in our basement.” (I’m proud to say that Kara and I now really real friends—it even became Facebook official after I lived in her house for about 3 weeks.)
Many times people who didn’t know who I was would just try to guess. After all it is a small town so everyone prides themselves on knowing everything about everybody even the strangers they have never met before. One lady tried to figure out who I was in what seemed to be a game of 20 questions. “Didn’t you grow up in Coldwater?” No. “Well, then you must be from Indiana.” No. “What are you teaching at the high school?” Nothing. She then finally got around to asking me who I was and what I was doing instead of trying to guess.
As stranger in a small town people often wonder what could have brought you to their little town. And since no one knew who I was it was very tempting to make up stories about whoever I wanted to be. The best story I came up with was that I was a graduate student from K-State majoring in prairie biology with and emphasis in tumble weed migration. After all, where would be a better place to study tumble weeds than southwest Kansas. I was working on my thesis and needed to collect some data so I was spending most of my time putting electronic trackers on tumble weeds. Alas, I never actually used this story but I thought it was pretty good and even somewhat believable.
During my time on my clinical I had quite a bit of fun with my old friends and new friends. This included going to Zumba class at 6am on Friday mornings and then moaning and groaning about how sore we were the rest of the weekend, having a brunch with cheesecake and bacon, watching movies and then quoting these movies for weeks, making adventure books—now we just have to go on adventures, and laughing—a lot.
