The state of Denmark

January 16, 2006 at 5:19 pm | Posted in Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans | Leave a comment

I wonder who has my financial aid money at this very moment? It certainly isn’t in my bank account, despite the fact that Tulane’s accounting office records show that it was disbursed to me on January 9th, and I have direct deposit with Tulane which has always worked before, even last fall post-hurricane. And when I called about it last Friday, I was told that the accounting office could only be reached by email. And no one at the school knows where my money is. And apparently there are a number of medical students in the same predicament. Seems kind of fishy to me, like they’re trying to float some other payment with our financial aid money.

Tulane’s President came and spoke to the medical students a week or so ago, and I was just not impressed with anything about him other than his public speaking skills and forceful personality. Which are gifts that can be used for good or ill, depending on the character of the person who has them.

I feel like he took a shortcut to solve a problem for which there are no shortcuts, and in doing so, he compromised my education in profound and lasting ways. If the University hadn’t confiscated all the medical school’s funds and placed them in its general fund, the school would probably be better off separating from the University and forming a stand-alone school. But unfortunately, where it once probably had the financial means to do so, it no longer has control of those funds.

So today was a complete flail of a day. I forgot it was MLK day, and went up to the hospital dressed in regular clothes, thinking I would get my ID and locker, so I could change into hospital scrubs there. After realizing that wouldn’t work, I looked for the neurosurgery service, which was done rounding by that point, and I couldn’t find them. So I thought I’d go home and change into scrubs, come back and look for them in the OR. I came back, looked for them on the floor again, then decided I would go over to the faculty center to find one of the faculty whom I had asked if I could come by Monday to talk about working in their lab. The faculty center was closed, as were the neurosurgery offices inside it. So I went back over to the hospital, went up to the ORs, and discovered that there were no surgeries scheduled for the day. So I gave up and went home. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m sick, and have no business going in anyway. Particularly to a hospital where so many people are immunosuppressed on chemotherapy. But I doubt that issue carries any weight with the people overseeing me on this rotation, so I’ll just have to suck it up and go in and take whatever heat they want to dish out for not being able to find them today.