I was looking at the back of my shoes today, and thought that the logos were printed at an angle … until I realized that my SHOES were at an angle! Looks like internship has taken quite a toll on my soles. My first rotation on a ward service has taught me the importance of having a pair of comfortable shoes that will allow me to run between 8 different floors of the hospital building and still go reasonably well with a pair of slacks. The other thing I’ve learned on general medicine is how much I can hate my pager. As a med student, we wore our pagers like a sheriff’s badge, a symbol of responsibility. Of course, back then, we were just paging each other about what to order for take-out on call nights. But now, with pages ranging from ICU call-outs with acute shortness-of-breath to cross-covers threatening to leave AMA because we won’t feed their narc addiction, the buzz of the pager has come to evoke both a sense of fear and aggravation. I can hardly wait until my upcoming vacation, when I’ll be pager-free for two full weeks.