Worts and Hernias
I was jabbering away, telling the warts story at a work mentoring event when I got the call. It was 4:15, Thursday, March 5, two weeks ago today.
My sister called, then she sent three text messages. When my brother called I knew.
Here’s the warts story.
I was working in Minneapolis between my first and second year in graduate school. I got an internship at a reputable custom research provider. By way of background, you should know, I talked my way into graduate school, but then they paid me to be there. I was a star student and my future was bright. I really thought my shit didn’t stink.
About two weeks in to a three-month internship I realized that they were not going to let me do much more than run the copier and assemble research reports into binders. The wouldn’t let me write, they wouldn’t let me speak with the client, they wouldn’t let me write the survey or do the analysis.
I was an intern and they trusted me to run the copier, stack the reports, assemble the reports into the three-ring binders, put the binders in the box, put a label on the box, put the box in the mail.
I called my father to complain.
My father, Dr. Richard J. Westcott, II, the surgeon. A man of immense physical and mental and psychological strengths and capabilities. A man who could open up a living human being and put his hands inside that living being to fix them. A man who made perfect pie crust, fixed cars, parallel park a stick shift Volvo station wagon on a hill, sober or drunk. A man I thought the world of, but a man who had no idea about the business world. A man who was incapable when it came to helping me with real life things – getting into college, getting a job, deciding what to do with my life. He was good at a lot of things. He was not very good at governance.
He said, oh Jani, life is mostly warts and hernias. Every once in a while I get an interesting case – something really neat, like an intestine tied in a knot, a complicated tumor that needs to be removed, just so. But mostly life is warts and hernias. You open them up, you sew them up, you close them up. Zip, zip. That’s it.
Tell you what, though. Hernia’s sent you to college and now you’re here. Keep up the good work. I’m so proud of you. Go. Go. Go. You’ll be fine.
