Yesterday I started volunteering at a community health clinic. It looks good on a med school application and I also thought it might help keep me focused on the real reason I'm taking organic chemistry and molecular biology this semester. I found this place through my sister, who went there for her goiter.

The volunteer thing started off poorly. No one seemed to know why I was there; the woman who hired me was stuck in a meeting or something. They put me to work labeling medical records, which was fine by me. But after about 45 minutes my mind started to wander and then I started feeling trapped. What the fuck was I doing putting little color-coded stickers on file folders? How long could I do this without complaining? I decided I'd do it for four weeks (which would be eight half-days of volunteering) and then I'd demand a more interesting assignment. But how would I make it through an entire month? My free time is in desperately short supply these days and I have no money... how could I devote 50-60 hours to these little stickers?!?!

I tried to calm myself by striking up a conversation with Jose, the guy I was working with. Jose used to work here at U.S.C. in student health services. "What'd you think of the students," I asked him. "Were they nice?"

"Uh, you know, yeah. The students were great. Louis and I were gonna go to U.S.C.," he said, referring to another coworker in the room. "But we decided it wasn't worth our time. Right, Louis?"

Louis looked confused and didn't answer.

Jose: "I said you and I got into U.S.C., but we decided we'd rather work here instead. Right, Louis?"

Louis tried to laugh it off, but I could tell he was offended. My comment was intended to spark some conversation about how the U.S.C. undergrads are, on the whole, kind of snotty and rude. "Please" and "thank you" are rarely heard around here. But I guess I should have realized that what I was really doing was pointing out the fissure between the students and the campus workers -- something that obviously touches on a pretty deep insecurity in Jose. When I realized this, I felt awfully turd-like.

I shut up for the next 45 minutes. Jose left and came back several times, but rarely spoke to me. Then he called me out of the office and led me down a hallway. A hallway which I was predicing would lead to a backdoor through which I'd be pushed -- a proper fate for a snotty little Trojan like me. But instead Jose took me to the nurse's station where he introduced me to the clinic's doctors and told them how helpful I was being. The doctors were awfully nice and offered to chat with me at the end of the day, which was terribly generous since they see patients from 8am to 7pm every day.

I thanked Jose two or three times. "That was really great, Jose. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate it." He blushed and nodded and then we got back to the stickers.

Then, at the end of the day, I had a nice long chat with one of the doctors and he offered to let me shadow him.