On Being Dumb

So The Girl got me thinking with a post she wrote last week.

The first line said, "Do you ever feel dumb?"

Umm, that would be a yes.

I don't generally consider myself a stupid person. In fact, many times I would rate myself smarter than most of the people I attend college with. (You would too if you entered your online classroom and saw other students typing things like, "I think NWA is a grate companie.")

In fact, an old friend of mine from high school looked me up and was surprised to hear that I hadn't graduated from college yet. He said, "Man, I thought you'd be a doctor by now or something!"

Yes, I know. I'm a freakin' genius.

So anyway, I've been working at this veterinary clinic for a total of 12 days now. And I think it's safe to say that I've been categorized as The Stupid Girl.

I've been thrown in the mix of a crazy clinic with too many clients and not enough employees. Man, that makes for a fun time. In an average day I clean raunchy kennels, give food and water to pets that have spent the night, throw in a load of laundry here and there, wash dishes, take syringes apart, answer phones, show clients to the exam room, file charts, and assist with anything else that needs to be done (so essentially, I'm a grunt).

None of this stuff is mentally challenging. I mean, who can't effectively clean a kennel or wash dishes while thinking about a million different things at once?

Well the first day I worked there, a co-worker called me an idiot - right to my face. I can't even remember the context, but it felt awesome.

And when one of the doctors realized that I don't speak sign language (or read minds), he sent me off to mop the floor so one of his other grunts could come hold a dog's neck up so he could draw its blood (instead of saying, "Hold the dog's neck up so I can draw its blood.").

And then today, the same doctor handed me a chart and said, "Put this in slot five."

Yeah. Slot five. Ok. I had no idea what he was talking about, and when I asked him where "slot five" was, he shot me this You Have Got to be Kidding Me look. The same girl that called me an idiot looked over at the doctor and rolled her eyes. They seriously had a moment - an Oh.My.Gosh.Is She Really That Stupid? kind of moment.

I snapped, "I can only do what I've been told how to do. Where is slot five?"

I could go on for hours about the how many times I've been treated like a moron at this job. But it'll be over in a few weeks (18 work days, to be exact). Besides that, a lot of the instances I could talk about just aren't the same if you aren't there to witness it.

So yes, The Girl, that was the long answer to, "Do you ever feel dumb?"