this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it friggin shine

research is great. especially when you are involved in any kind of recruiting. you say the same spiel over and over again. mine is:
here at the university of pennsylvania we're looking at how genes affect body weight, and one of the groups that we're studying is women who have been thin all of their lives. And we're setting up assessments in ________ (insert white-bread US city here), the assessments take about 10-15 minutes, we take exact height and weight measurements, have you fill out a survey, and take a small amount of blood (very funny wording - we draw 6 10 ml tubes, which is actually quite a bit), and each participant receives $100. Does this sound all right?
my voice goes up at the end and then I wait for them to say "sure," or "that sounds good to me" or they ask all kinds of questions about location, when the assessments are, how they can't believe there are thin women in their town because everyone is so fat...
then I go on to:
I just need to ask you some background questions:
are you adopted?
what's your racial background?
how old are you?
how tall?
what is your current weight? - here's where the madness begins. some of these women are like 5'5'' and 100 lbs. ridiculously skinny
have you ever weighed more than that outside of pregnancy?
do you have any sisters?
If yes, how many and are any of them overweight or obese?
if they answer those question correctly then I move onto my spiel about how we are not scheduling right now, but will call them back, and then get addresses and proper spelling of names, etc.
I have done this over 250 times in the last week.
yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
I can do the whole spiel, except for the height and weight and age stuff, while doing completely separate things - checking my email, organizing papers.
i am super fucking perky though, go along with jokes and occasionally make my own "oh, your husband didn't pass on the message I left? they're good for that, aren't they?" hehe.
and then are the chatters who want to tell me their weight history, how they got down to 88 lbs while working as a nurse in the himalayas. how they can eat like a horse and not gain weight. bla bla bla. and here I am with my farmers build, hips and big shoulders, feeling like I could snap every one of these little ladies in two.
hold on - i am talking to one of them now...
..................................
so anyway, that is what I have been doing NONSTOP I might add, for the last work week. on and on it goes.
but hey, it's a fucking job.
H