Little Miss Klara Klein

I usually don't put a lot of stock into first impressions. Looking back at meeting some of my best friends over the years, we didn't always get off on the right foot (or any foot for that matter). To recount a just few, I'm fairly certain that Josh Hafkin and I each thought the other was an ass for a good bit before seeing the light. It took Phil Owen two years of college to even speak to me (Phil, I hope you're reading this over there in Western Samoa. See you soon!). And if you read "To Keith and Denise Laabs," it should be quite obvious that I don't always make the best first impressions.

But let me tell you a little something about how I met Klara Klein.

On the second day of orientation, our "college" (or "House" if you speak Harry Potter) ate dinner at Franklin Street Pizza and Pasta. UNC-SOM is divided up into five advisory colleges, and the icky first years of Dimock College were to dine together at this Franklin favorite with their prefects. Being only Day 2, we weren't totally sick of meeting new people, and I was attempting to learn the names of all my fellow classmates sitting at the table. I remember sitting next to Kevin Pearlstein and Andrew Wallace, because I was calling Andrew Kevin and Kevin Andrew (I still mix them up just for fun). Sarah Pierrie was there, Justin Woodlief as well, and my goal was to learn at least half our college's names by night's end. Then suddenly out of nowhere, this feisty vixen comes out of left field with a challenge!"

"You are NEVER going to remember my name."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah"
"What is it?"
"Klara."
"Klara what."
"Klara Klein!"

Saaaaay whaaat?? Are you kidding me? I wasn't going to remember the name "Klara Klein?" It's an appellation straight out of Diagon Alley! Plus the challenge, well, there was no way I would forget. Now the next part is a little hazy, but at some point the ish escalated. The pugnacious Klara Klein had set forth yet another challenge for the evening: she told me she was going to kick my ass. At this point it important to keep in mind that we were all sitting down at the table. The second we stood up to "throw some bows," I realized that Ms. Klara Klein was a solid 5'0'' in heels, and thus we had apparently fought in different weight classes in college. Upon reflection, it is probably good we didn't make a scene that evening. I'm not sure I would have come out of that one unscathed (might have lost a knee perhaps). By the next morning, the Klein/Swendiman tandem was running for class president.

I learned quickly that Ms. Klein packs a lot into her 4'3'', 76 lbs. frame (rough estimate). She is what we normies call a "MUD-PHUD" or MD/PhD candidate. Klara will spend the first two years of medical school with us schmos, then take approximately 4 years to pursue her PhD. She will come back (and join the Class of 2017?) as a 3rd year before completing med school and her subsequent residency. Post-medical training, she most likely will return to academia and discover the cure for cancer or the common cold, or perhaps follow in the footsteps of her great-great-great-great-great-uncle's grandfather, Nicolas Flamel, and attempt to discover the Elixer's formula for true immortality with the Philospher's Stone. If you don't believe she has the gumption for this research, in 2007/2008 she "investigated a novel method for transition metal catalyzed pyrrole synthesis using vinylogous diazo esters and nitriles" (sounds like some crazy ass Harry Potter stuff to me!). Anywho, Klara is one of the 8 or so smarty-pantses in our class that are here for the long haul.

Klara left her home state of Georgia to serve four years in Palo Alto, California as an undergraduate at Stanford. There she was awarded a B.S. in Chemistry (Biological Sciences minor), met her lifemate Evan Zeitler (now an MS1 at UNC who continually eludes his inevitable demise on the tennis court - I'm coming for you), and learned "glove box techniques" (the handling of biochemical terrorist agents in space suits through the large rubber gloves that protrude through safety glass, who knew). Klara also won Stanford's most prestigious Chemistry award, the S.S. & I.M.F. Marsden Memorial Prize, given to the most outstanding undergraduate student who has been involved in significant research in the department. If she had not been accepted into medical school (highly unlikely), she would have opened a novelty bakery and pastry shop which I would have frequented daily if only to see Klara peer at me over her 1970s register.

Since becoming soul mates in that first short week, I've enjoyed too few dinners, coffee dates, and small group sessions with Ms. Klein, and ass-kickings by her hubby Evan in tennis. How she balances school, life, and a new puppy, all whilst going to bed before the sun goes down is an enviable miracle. She is living the dream, and I reap the benefits of a wonderfully one-sided relationship: I get freshly baked cookies during small group, a tennis partner in the summer months, and the whole UNC Cardiology team to look after my big, loving heart (Papa Klein is like the chief baller cardiologist here in Chapel Hill). In return, I distract Klara and the rest of the Dimock from learning anything during small group sessions and Potions. When Klara asked today what the difference between a "heave" and "thrill" on a cardiac exam was, my response was that "I sometimes heave after a night of thrills." As usual, I bring little to the table at our morning sessions.

Loving, compassionate, pugnacious, my vertically opposite Meyer's-Briggs twin, Klara Klein is a playful pitbull in the body of a shitzu. It was fate that brought us together, and I will never forget the indelible first impression she made. And as we both seem to be on the ten year Chapel Hill plan, I will enjoy every heave and thrill we have together during our tenure, as well as all the schmos we meet along the way...