Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to put Paul Goerdt into the Infectious Diseases course.

Everybody knows that pre-meds are apt to take home a new disease every week–mistaking hunger pangs for the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and nonsense like that. But if anyone in the provost’s office had read over Goerdt’s psych profile (which he helpfully included in his application) in addition to his grades, they might have suggested something a bit more appropriate, like lab research on rats. But no.

Goerdt, as anyone who knew him could testify, had a way of internalizing everything to the nth degree coupled with periods of extreme mania (though without any depression). Coupled with his pessimism, extreme intelligence, and decided lack of respect for the niceties of civilized life, incidents were bound to occur.

So when his fellow classmates were using an electric thermometer to make sure they hadn’t contracted this or that, Goerdt was running on a rec center treadmill to try and pass the (imaginary) toxins out of his body faster. When asked by the campus DPS why that entailed jogging with no clothes, they were assured that it was to guard against the threat of reabsorbtion and to make sure that every endocrine gland was fully employed.