What Your Lanyard Says About You1
Lanyards, eh? They’re everywhere now. When I was a boy it was good enough to just staple your ID badge to your nipple (my family demanded identification at all times), but nowadays we wear all manner of frippery. And I bet you thought that the piece of cloth that connects your ID, watch, pens, keys and depleted uranium to your neck was just for infection control- but far from it! Whilst you’ve been letting your valuables smack into OSCE patient’s faces and doing “medicine”, I’ve been carefully analysing the different types of lanyards according to a complex psychometric algorithm that I developed in my serial-killer-esque bedroom. Needless to say my girlfriend has left me. Anyway, here are the fruits of my labour.The St. George’s Student Union
The all in black classy number? No. Let’s face it,
this is the vanilla option. It says either “I got tangled up in one of these
during fresher’s fair and forgot” or “I’m a bland personality-less humanoid who
is terrible in bed”. You are the background actor in someone else’s ITV drama.
If you’re directly employed by the university then I’ll give you a free pass
but otherwise please take this opportunity to choose another lanyard2.
The NHS NHS NHS…
Yes! Wear your passport to the people’s Republic of
the NHS proudly! This means that whether you believe that the NHS is the
Titanic heading towards the iceberg of global capitalism or vice versa, you’ll
keep playing your violin till the end. And in honour of this I salute you. And
apart from socialist pride, this lanyard is by far the most finely made. The
cross-stitched Egyptian cotton prevent friction burns from even the heaviest
lanyard.
The St George’s Hospital Foundation Trust
Pretty in pink? Hardly! That pink is the blood of the
proletariat. You might as well go full Virgin red. Besides, who do you think
you are? An actual doctor!? You have to earn
the right to wear a symbol of the inexorable slide towards privatisation. It’s
almost as if they don’t understand basic human social cues… I’m not saying that
everyone who wears this lanyard is in fact a conglomeration of intelligent and
well coordinated hagfish
inside a human skin suit, but I’m not saying they aren’t either. That’s for the
courts/history to decide.
The Lanyard-Less
You zig when the world zags, and by doing so embody
the spirit of the noble otter- independent, stylish and possessing a pheromone
virtually toxic to the human nose. In this metaphor that fishy miasma
represents the little windup wire thingy that you attach the badge to your belt
with. You know this is repellent, the uni equivalent of a hands-free bluetooth
headset, yet you do it because it is in some way better than a lanyard. In a
world of insanity, maybe the only sane choice is to act insane3.
The Royal Society of Medicine
This is a smart choice. Just the right whiff of the
royal college lanyard favoured by consultants but not enough to come across as
arrogant. This is the lanyard of the career climber. Be careful around this one
though, their glowing CV hides a dark history of doing anything to get what
they want. They have killed, and they will kill again. If someone wearing this
lanyard asks you to accompany them on a trip to a secluded mountain lodge,
abandoned fairground, derelict lighthouse or disused meat factory then politely
refuse. This should buy you an hour. You must then burn your phone and identity
documents (to be safe just burn down your entire house), withdraw all your
money and pick a random flight. Do not contact your friends or family, they
will already be dead. Never look back. This is your life now.
The Medical Student
This is available from Amazon
at the low low price of £3.49! But be quick, because they’re only six left!
This is perfect for the student with early onset dementia, or with a self
esteem so low that they need almost constant validation that they are in fact
supposed to be here.The Conferencer
Look, I get it. You went to that conference one time
because he/she was going, and you thought it might make your FPAS look less
depressing. I know how it goes. It’s super boring but they look into it, so
you overdo it a bit on the enthusiastic tweets. Things get a bit weird that
night after a few bottles of free conference wine and hotel schnapps, he/she
comes back to your room and you kiss. But he/she says it was just a mistake,
and he/she just wants to be friends, so you guys watch Spider-Man 3 and
awkwardly fall asleep side by side on the single bed. Now they’re with someone
else and all you have is the lanyard to remember them by. Like I said, I get it4.
The I Have a Life Outside of George’s
It’s nice to do other things. For example, I compete
in beetle fighting tournaments at a professional level. But doesn’t it come off
a bit braggy to wear the lanyard? Sure, I could wear one of the many glorious
lanyards that I have accrued from my beetle fighting career (if I could only
wash the beetle juice off them) but that’s not why I got into the beetle
fighting game. I do it for the beetles, many of whom have no other route out of
beetle poverty. You especially shouldn’t wear the lanyard if what you’ve done
is nothing to be proud of- say a show at the Edinburgh Fringe. And so there’s
no confusion, I’m directing this at you Jon Kirk5. Here’s my review
for your autobiographical one man show: Jon Kirk: A Life of Satire and Shame,
has no satire, and the only shame is on the part of the audience. It is
essentially an incoherent romp through his formative years, but this is no
ordinary bildungsroman. There are several quite distressing scenes, including a
fifteen minute erotic dream sequence in which he silently acts out Finding Nemo. I assumed the piece was a
post-structuralist criticism of pre-communist Czechoslovakia, before realising
it was just bad. See this if you want to see a grown man on the edge of tears.
Three stars.
The Other Uni
DTF or GTFO.
Please address all complaints to Roop Gill6.
Footnotes
- This
is exactly the kind of click-bait title that appeals to the narcissistic
core of ‘Generation Me’. And this is exactly the kind of faux-intellectual
comment that might get this article picked up by The Medical Student.
- Of
course a majority of non-medical student Georgians will wear this option,
but as part of the unilateral “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” anti-non-medical
student policy here at the Dragon I can’t mention them, and must in fact
actively try to alienate them.
- This
seems profound but is actually nonsense.
- Here
I’ve constructed this narrative, which looks like a depressing anecdote
from my own life, to draw attention away from the fact that people ywho go
to conferences are in fact actually quite hard working and successful, and
therefore better than me. This mutual muck-slinging is a technique I also
use in my personal life, and I highly recommend it.
- This
appears to be a self-indulgent in joke. However the man in question does
not in fact exist, therefore it was just a waste of the reader’s time.
- Don’t worry they’ll still reach me! Roop personally reads each criticism to me as I fall asleep, interspersed with deeply personal insults and crotch punches.
Written by: Benji Fricker-Muller
