One of the pleasures :-( of being the head of a department is having to sign the log books of interns. The other pleasures include having to sign other documents, but let us stick to the first one here. The health university has given this pleasurable activity to department heads. The pleasure comes in triplicate. There are three places where the head of the department has to sign, after the person under whom the intern has worked has signed. Of these signatures, one is on a completion certificate. The other two are on identical pages, of which one is probably retained by the department that runs the internship program. These two pages are not consecutive pages in the log book. For making the pleasurable activity a little tolerable, the interns put pieces of paper near the spine of the log book, marking those pages - book marks or tags. They are actually not so thoughtful. The clerk and peon in the departmental office make them do it, so that the head of department does not get irritated trying to find the right pages. Usually the interns do it properly. Sometimes they don't put any book marks. Sometimes they put them in wrong places. Sometimes the bookmarks fall off. I have been doing this work from 2001. Even when there are book marks, getting the right pages open is a bit of a hassle. If you don't believe me, sit with 20-25 notebooks, tag them, and try opening them. After 14 years of this work, I found an intern who thought out of the box.
She had taken a card measuring about 4" x 5". She had cut three sides of another rectangle in the middle of this card. Then she had folded this part out like a trapdoor. Then she had put the base marking the last page requiring my signature, the flap marking the second page requiring my signature, and had marked the first page with a separate piece of card. Opening those two pages somewhat near each other was a breeze. I remembered her as a student, sitting in the front row during lectures and paying attention to the lectures. When the peon took away the log books after I had signed them, I suddenly thought about congratulating her for this idea. Unfortunately she had already collected her log book in those few minutes and gone away. This batch of interns had finished their internship. I am unlikely to see them again, unless they come to our institute for postgraduate studies. Hence this post. I hope she reads this or someone who does tells her about it. I am sure this intern will do well in life, because how can one who can think original thoughts not do well?
She had taken a card measuring about 4" x 5". She had cut three sides of another rectangle in the middle of this card. Then she had folded this part out like a trapdoor. Then she had put the base marking the last page requiring my signature, the flap marking the second page requiring my signature, and had marked the first page with a separate piece of card. Opening those two pages somewhat near each other was a breeze. I remembered her as a student, sitting in the front row during lectures and paying attention to the lectures. When the peon took away the log books after I had signed them, I suddenly thought about congratulating her for this idea. Unfortunately she had already collected her log book in those few minutes and gone away. This batch of interns had finished their internship. I am unlikely to see them again, unless they come to our institute for postgraduate studies. Hence this post. I hope she reads this or someone who does tells her about it. I am sure this intern will do well in life, because how can one who can think original thoughts not do well?
