By Gregory Hardy
Detours Staff Writer
My youngest brother, who's in a pre-med program up North, called me this weekend and asked if I knew anything about Barry University.
I told Andy it was somewhere down near Miami, but that was about all I knew.
"I was asking, because I heard they have a pretty good podiatry program down there."
That's when I almost had a heart attack. If you don't know what a podiatrist is, I'll tell you first off their specialty isn't heart attacks. It's feet.
At first, I thought our dad put him up to this. Back in my waning high school days, when pop still held on to that slimmest of hope I'd go into a med program, podiatry was all he talked about.
His theory on why this was the best route to go was basically: who in their right mind would want to be a foot doctor? Under his plan, I would be the only podiatrist in the hemisphere and would thus make a killing curing people's filthy toenail disease.
He did have some good points, though. "Hey," he reasoned, "no one calls the foot doctor in the middle of the night with an emergency."
So at the end of high school, the whole foot doctor career path reached the ears of my friends, and I never heard the last of it. A couple of months ago, I saw one of these people for the first time in five years. When I told him I was working in newspapers, the first thing out of his mouth was, "Foot thing didn't work out, huh?"
Andy said dad didn't put him up to it. But I smelled something funny, and it wasn't a used Dr. Scholl's. "Why Barry University?"
"Because you only need a 2.5 GPA for podiatry and dental programs. Most others need a 3.5."
"So, your GPA is hovering around a 3.4, huh?"
He didn't find this amusing.
But at least I understood his problem a little better. There's a point in everybody's undergrad years when you realize you're completely unqualified for what you want to get into. And when you're at a private school 1,000 miles from home in a med program, you start to realize maybe feet don't smell all that bad.
Andy's not interested in dental work because there's "too many dentists in Florida." The foot thing has a nice path-of-least resistance quality.
Boy, feet vs. teeth. How do you choose? You're asking to smell people's worst odors either way. He was torn between the two, especially prestige-wise.
I wasn't able to help him out, but next time I talk to him I'll at least be able to prove society holds teeth in higher esteem than feet: Every advertisement in the world has a model with perfect teeth, but in every porno the woman is completely naked except for the requisite pumps.
But basically I'm not too worried about him. You know how it is in college when people face career choices. You know some people will succeed in whatever they do, while others you know are doomed for slave labor after they've finished their degree in a mere six and a half years.
One way I can prove there are students with too much time on their hands -- the "Nosebowl" flag football game between Tau Epsilon Phi and Pi Lamda Phi fraternities gets televised.
I was mostly upset by the fact that I lost money in my fantasy Nosebowl league this weekend. It wasn't even my fault - my star running back tore his ACL, and my first-string quarterback depledged.
Fortunately I bought the new Sega Nosebowl 96 game, and I kicked my friend 's ass. I was the 1979 Tep team and he was the 1987 Pi Lams. He never stood a chance. But if he comes down with athlete's foot in 10 years, I'll know where to send him.
(10/24/96)
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15FRATROW.COM Note -
Mr. Hardy should be commended for taking an interest in Nosebowl. and buying the latest games, however, he must have been somewhat confused when selecting the 1979 Tep team. That team lost to Pilam, 26-0. Likewise, the 1987 Pilam also defeated Tep, 42-20. The more interesting game would have been the '79 Pilams versus the '87 Pilams.