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Not Just Another "ER" Fan............................ By Ann E. Shanahan '59 ............................ |
Picture this. It's Thursday at 10 p.m. in Laura Scales House and on the television screen is the frenzied mayhem of stretchers, running EMT's, the sounds of sirens blaring and doctors being paged. You're sitting there in your room surrounded by your friends as a new episode of "ER," NBC's popular entry in the hospital-program sweepstakes, fills the screen. If you're Safiah Ismail, and a world-class "ER" fan, you're in your element. You insist on quiet while the program is on (everybody in the house knows that); you've never missed a show since the fall of 1994, when "ER" premiered; and you routinely wear your official "ER" scrubs on Thursday nights. Watching "ER" is always a great experience but tonight it turns out to be unbeleeeeevable!
No one is more gratified than Safi is to see Smith's name show up on "ER." Perhaps she even had a hand in it. Last summer, when Safi and a Smith friend were in California, they went to a play in which Noah Wyle, who plays Dr. Carter on "ER," was appearing. It was Safi's plan to present him with a Smith T-shirt, but since it was almost curtain time when she arrived at the theater, she had to settle for asking the stage manager to deliver it to him; she never found out whether he actually received the shirt but maybe he didand maybe that's why Smith's name popped up on the show. Although "ER" has many fans among Smith students, Safi is neither your average "ER" fan nor your average Smith student. Sure, she is a double major in English and American studies, achieving a high B average, and she's house president in Laura Scales and a Gold Key guide, but beyond this Safi is a 23-year-old junior from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who arrived at Smith by a circuitous route. After graduating from high school at the age of 17, spending two years in a preuniversity program, and an additional year studying at the University of Wales, College of Cardiff, which she found didn't suit her, Safi learned about Smith from alumnae in Kuala Lumpur and enrolled in the fall of 1994. Safi's debut at Smith coincided with the debut of "ER" on NBC and she was smitten by both right away. Of the show, she says, "I was impressed with the realism and human interaction. There are so many different characterspeople you can't get along with, people who are sinking lower in their livesand a nice mixture of topics." Safi was not unfamiliar with American television, having spent two years of her childhood in White Plains, New York, while her father was on assignment with IBM. And her interest in "ER" and the other shows she watches is not an idle one. "A lot of people assume I'm a bio or pre-med major," she says, but actually she is headed toward television programming and production after she graduates from Smith. Last summer Safi did a six-week internship with "Entertainment Tonight"; when she graduates she hopes to join a 10-month NBC page program that has provided an entrée to the entertainment industry for many of its participants. In the meantime, she'll continue to watch "ER," wearing her official scrubs (which she bought) and occasionally her "ER" T-shirt and baseball cap (which were gifts), and tend to her "ER" memorabilia: the photo album, the cast photos displayed on her wall and the early review from TV Guide that predicted that "ER" would never make it. "They said it wasn't interesting enough to stand up." |
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The story unfolds and suddenly--in
the midst of the IV drips, the blood and gore, the sutures and the life-reviving
electro-jolts--Dr. Ross tells his colleagues that the new woman in his life,
Gretchen, "is a mergers and acquisitions specialist at First National.
She went to Smith, Yale Law School and she's a Rhodes Scholar." Nurse
Hathaway feigns surprise: "Smith, wow, most of the women you date can't
even spell Smith." (Gretchen didn't last long in Dr. Ross' life, but
Smith came up in the next episode: "How's Gretchen?" "You
mean the one who went to Smith?" "She's fine.")