Painful Life Lesson Number 1.

I've finally started school and three days in have realized that I am probably going to be learning painful life lessons all over the place. So I'm going to share them in the hope that others won't have to suffer as I may. Or at least when they suffer they will have seen it coming.

I made a promise to myself that this time around (aka the last time around) in school I was going to really bust my balls and be generally AWESOME. Like you know that person in every class that always has the answer and is always taking charge while everyone else just hangs around thinking "I really wish that guy would just go to hell, they are exhausting me"? That person.

And I've been doing a really good job so far (even though let's face it, its not a hard pace to keep up three days in). I've been keeping up with the reading really well, volunteering answers, meeting with my profs, all the behaviors that I have observered to be affected by these mysterious "good students" over the years.

But being an awesome brown-nosing douche comes with a price, as does everything in life. And I'm hoping that I paid the entire price today because I really can't imagine owing any more after this.

We were in Gross Anatomy lab for the first time this afternoon, which is the basic intro anatomy lab where you dissect a cadaver with 5 other classmates. And I'll be hoenst, I was sort of nervous. Because I've never cut open a dead embalmed body before. But I've seen autopsies, which put me a step ahead of some of my classmates who had never seen a body outside of the context of a coffin before. So I felt ok. A little excited even.

They wheel out my cadaver, and one guy takes off the vinyl sheath, but everyone is being really timid about removing the cotton shroud, aka the final layer between US AND DEATH!! So I go for it, rolling it back and putting it in a tupperware bin full of embalming fluid. Then everyone is being timid about making first incisions. So I go for it, cutting down the midline, laterally above and below the ribcage, this is easy, there isn't even any blood!! So I'm feeling like a dissection rock star, high fiving myself for my boldness, feigning modesty when the prof compliments my skin-flaying skillz but secretly soaring on the wings of confidence and egomania.

Then it happens. God smacks me back down to earth. And God's pimp hand is strong.

In slow motion (for me), my elbow bumps the scalpel tray beside the dissection table. A pair of forceps shoots, as though spring-loaded, into the air, and splashes into the space between my cadaver's flayed skin and exposed back muscles. And a generous quantity of embalming fluid shoots into the air, gracefully arcing through empty space before landing on my shirt, neck, hair, face, and--wait for it--in my mouth. In. My fucking. Mouth.

My reaction wasn't dramatic or anything. I just sort of stood there like a stunned moose, and the three guys who saw it looked at me in horror for a second until I lightly quipped "whoopsie! haha brb fellas!" Then I went into the hallway and quietly dry heaved for a few seconds before toweling myself off and returning to my station.

The I have learned a valuable lesson--if you are a cocky asshole, even just in your own head, the universe will take you down. Sometimes, as in my case, it is immediate. Sometimes, like in Kanye West's case, it is slightly more delayed. But it always, always happens.