12 February, 2010. 5:25 PM.

So, what’s a girl to do with an EMT certification? Jump into her school’s volunteer corps, of course! I competed at BU’s Yankauer Games with Brandeis (we were pretty awesome) and took my first shift on my 19th birthday. My first call came in during Music History, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything of consequence.
I’ve taken six shifts and six calls since November. I TA the EMT class at Brandeis (taught by BU) with other BEMCo people and the BU instructors who I was taught by. I really like what I’m doing.

I’m not really here to talk about medicine. It’ll probably end up that way at some point, but right now, I just want to talk about the experience. And I do apologize for dropping off of here for so long—long story short, some people were concerned about the fact that some secondary’s girlfriend was all of a sudden blogging about BEMCo very enthusiastically, that she was going to be an EMT, that she might not know what she was doing. I was warned on my first call, “This doesn’t go in the blog,” but other than that, it’s not an issue anymore.

I try to not to enthuse too much about this, but I’m completely smitten with volunteering here. For those 24 hours when I’m on call, I’m actually a somewhat useful member of society. I’m trying not to end up filling this post with phrases like “being a part of something bigger than me” and “feeling important,” because that’s not really what it’s about. It’s about our patients and what we’re doing for them in that moment. Some of them won’t remember us—most of them won’t. It’s not really us that they’re seeing—I’m not there as a student, as a musician, not even as a female, most of the time. I am my rank and my uniform.

Maybe it’s just from being new, but if I could be on call all the time, I would be. I feel silly when I talk about it to Matt, and I feel misunderstood when I talk about it with my family. I don’t really mind, though.

Also, not to self: I ought to start using 24 hour time on these. (Funny story though: not everyone uses 24 hour, so in class, a student asked if by “16:00-17:00” a professor meant “6:00-7:00” and the professor said in the “No, you moron” voice, “No, I mean 16:00-17:00” and some kind student explained to the first one exactly what the difference was.)