First Week Back At Graduate School

The day after Christmas, while I was crossing a street in central El Paso, an F-150 truck took me out. I don't remember anything for about ten minutes previous to the accident but a witness told me that I broke the truck's headlight, tumbled up onto the hood, then flew forward 15-20 feet. "You looked like a ragdoll in the air," she said. The guy in the car kept going and by the time he stopped, she said, he had hit me again with his bumper and my head was under his wheel. I probably wouldn't be alive if he hadn't stopped, and it's not clear if he stopped only because two witnesses blocked him in with their cars, believing he was about to keep right on going.

I woke up in the ambulance, strapped to a board. I asked, "What happened?" and the paramedic explained, "You were hit by a truck." I said, "I think my leg is broken," and she said, "Yes, yes, it's OK, we're taking you to the hospital." "Has someone called my dad?" "Yes, your family is already there." OK.

I have never drunk myself into such a stupor that I don't remember things, nor have I ever used the kind of drugs that involve memory loss or provoke surreal experiences. But I think I now have a good idea of what doing so might be like the morning after.

This is about the time when I should probably insert that I am currently enrolled at Stanford for the first year of a Ph.D. program in History, African History to be precise. There were times during the fall quarter when I felt like I had been hit by a truck, intellectually speaking, but I never in my life dreamed I would have a conversation with my advisor that included joking about my Vicodin-enhanced study sessions over the assigned readings for the week.