As I mentioned yesterday, I recently had a little medical crisis and ended up in a hospital emergency room after teaching a class. By going to the ER after my class, my husband and I both missed a faculty meeting.
As I lay on an ER gurney hooked up to lots of machines and with an IV port in one arm and lots of people coming and going to ask me to quantify my pain level on a scale of 1 to 10 etc. etc., I wondered whether I would rather be at the faculty meeting or in the ER. I had to think about it, and not just because I wasn't entirely lucid.
During a lull in the activity, as the machines were quietly beeping and I was waiting for some test results, I asked my husband whether it was better to have a medical emergency of a serious-but-not-fatal sort or to go to a faculty meeting, and he had to think about it as well, and not just because I was the one lying on the gurney.
So here comes what may be my second strangest poll ever: If you knew in advance that you weren't going to die or be otherwise seriously impaired for a long time, would you rather spend a few hours in an ER being stabbed, medicated, and monitored, or would you rather spend the same amount of time in a faculty meeting? (the following are invalid answers: all of the above, I wish we could have faculty meetings in the emergency room, none of the above, hamsters).