I have never thought of myself as a particularly organized person, nor do I think I am a slob. My clothes are usually hung up or folded on a shelf, though there is a bench in our bedroom that has a tendency to become strewn with random articles of clothing over time. Books are either organized on the bookshelf in alphabetical order or put in the giveaway box, but that’s usually not until after they have sat in the increasingly larger “read” book pile beside the bed for a few weeks/months. Sometimes, I forget to update my car registration until the day I have to take it in for state inspection. I’d categorize myself as moderately organized, with fluctuations depending on how busy my week is.

The one area where I give myself an organizational gold star is with email. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I am slightly obsessive about email organization. During work hours, my inbox is almost always at zero unread emails. The email apps on my phone look like this:

If they don’t, they will soon (side note: I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, who does not have this same obsessive behavior and will occasionally text me screenshots of her email app showing 10,000+ unread emails. I screamed the first time she did it. It makes me feel itchy just thinking about it.) This behavior stems from my reflexive need to be helpful. In order to be helpful, I need to promptly respond to any question I receive. I can’t respond to the question if I can’t find it in my email; ergo, I must keep my email organized so I can find the question I need to respond to so I can be helpful.

This almost pathological obsession with responding to email in order to be helpful corresponds closely to my mindset when I am having an in-person conversation with someone. If, during the conversation the person I am speaking with presents a challenge or problem they are experiencing, my instinct is to immediately try to solve the problem and share this advice with them (The Vanilla Ice lyric from Ice Ice Baby — If there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it — comes to mind. Perhaps not the ideal person to gather conversation advice from.) This drives my wife crazy. It took me years to understand that sometimes when she is telling me about a problem, she’s not asking me to fix it. She just wants me to listen and sympathize with her. I’m getting better at that. (Note from Scott: I am rushing to show this to my wife right now so she knows I am not the only one with this issue. We have had this conversation sooo many times)

Last week, we took our youngest kid to D.C. to start her first year of college at George Washington University (Contrary to what you may have read recently, D.C. is still standing and is not overrun by hoodlums and scofflaws. Yes, we feel safe sending her there. Yes, we felt that way months ago when she made her decision. I’m getting angry again. Time to move on.) Incredibly, with both kids now away at college, I am an empty nester. My daughter had her first day of classes yesterday, and it took every ounce of willpower not to text her on an hourly basis to check in and see how she was doing. How are classes going? Is everything OK? Is there anything I can do to help?  (UPDATE: Classes are fine, everything is fine, my help is not needed. Sigh.)

So, what does a guy with an inherent need to be helpful do when his email inbox is at zero and his family has little interest in soliciting his advice? He reminds everyone else that the CMEpalooza Ask Us Anything hotline is open and waiting. Whether it’s questions about CME, email organization, or the name of the teen drama musical that Vanilla Ice starred in in 1991 (it’s Cool as Ice), we can help. Let us help you help us help you: If you have an issue (professional or personal) you want us to help with, you can click here to submit your question(s). 

Last Wednesday, Radiohead surprise released a new album (it isn’t really a new album, so to speak, but a new live album of old songs, which, as I always say, old Radiohead is better than no Radiohead) and gave me the great idea that I should surprise release a new CMEpalooza blog post to, you know, generate buzz, and guerilla marketing, and increase synergies, and whatnot, though it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun to do a suprise CMEpalooza blog post if I told Scott about the surprise CMEpalooza blog post, so I had to figure out a way to write up a surprise CMEpalooza blog post without telling him I was doing that, which is a little bit tricky since I usually send him a heads-up whenever I have a draft of a new post, so he can edit all my typos, crazy punctuation, and run-on sentences, which he is much better at than I am (don’t tell him I said that), but I can’t send him a heads-up of a surprise CMEpalooza blog post because then the surprise would no longer be a surprise and that would ruin most of the fun of it, which is why I decided to write the surprise CMEpalooza blog post as one long run-on sentence, because then the only punctuation I need to worry about is commas and parentheses and I mostly know how to use commas and parentheses (it’s those dastardly semicolons and em dashes that always get me) and also then I don’t need to bother with all those annoying rules of paragraph formation, like only one idea per paragraph, blah, blah, blah, geez, give me a break, I mean, if that Norwegian guy Jon Fosse can write a 700-page novel as one long winding sentence and win the dang Nobel Prize for Literature, than surely I can do the same for one surprise CMEpalooza blog post, though I have to admit that I have discovered one flaw in my plan for a surprise CMEpalooza blog post, which is that I don’t really have any particularly urgent or new news to share that is worthy of a surprise CMEpalooza blog post, making this, uh, all a bit awkward, unless, let me check, yes, yes, we do have a few new updates to the CMEpalooza agenda that I can report, including new information about the 4 PM Afternoon Snack Session (sponsored by Medscape), and additional faculty added for a couple of the other sessions, so please be sure to check out the updated CMEpalooza agenda if you have not done so recently and thank you for reading my surprise CMEpalooza blog post.

Last week, I received an email from Scott informing me that he wrote up a blog post to let everyone know that we are doing CMEpalooza Trivia Night (again) at the Alliance Industry Summit (AIS). This was very generous of him to do, considering he is currently on vacation…somewhere (He told me where, but I don’t remember. Probably somewhere very expensive and glamorous like Monte Carlo or Bora Bora. Here’s a picture he sent me of him contemplating what to write for the blog):

(NOTE FROM SCOTT: We are in Sweden for 10 days – half in Stockholm, half in Gothenburg. If anyone wants to meet up to rag on Derek while I’m here, hit me up)

Despite being in vacation mode, he managed to crank out a very nice 1,500-word blog post about the importance of educators making a personal connection with unwilling learners. My only complaint is that readers had to scroll through nine paragraphs and 1,200 words before reaching the first mention of CMEpalooza Trivia Night. I’m flattered by the number of subscribers the CMEpalooza blog has (now well over 1,000), but I’m not enough of a blowhard to think that all of you read every single word we write. So, I’d like to reintroduce CMEpalooza Trivia Night just to make sure more of you are aware of it.

Here are the key details:

• WHAT: CMEpalooza Trivia Night
• WHEN: During AIS from 6-7:30 pm on Tuesday, Sept. 9
• WHERE: Hilton at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia (same location as AIS)
• WHY: Because it’s fun!,
• HOW: This is an excellent question. Typically for our trivia events we have five rounds of 5 questions. The first four questions of each round will be related to the theme of that round and the last question of each round will be a pop culture question.

Here is a general breakdown of the types of questions you will encounter during CMEpalooza Trivia Night (subject to change, etc., etc.):

Rounds 1, 2, and 4: Questions from AIS days 1 & 2. We try to create one question from each session from the first two days of AIS. If you are presenting on either of these days, we might be reaching out to you for help with developing a question from your session. As an example, this is one of the questions from last year’s CMEpalooza Trivia Night (I’ll put the answers at the very end.)

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

Round 3: This is a special round dedicated to our sponsor for the evening, AcademicCME. All questions for this round will feature AcademicCME or AcademicCME-adjacent trivia. For example:

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Round 5: CME Wildcard! (I used an exclamation mark to make it sound more exciting!) This section will consist of general questions related to CME, AIS, the Alliance and/or the ACCME. Here is an example from last year:

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Pop Culture Questions: As I mentioned previously, the last question of each round will be a pop culture question. We’re using “pop culture” as a bit of a catch-all term here. It basically means questions on any topic other than CME or AIS. It could be anything from TV shows to movies to history to sports to whatever. Since AIS is in our hometown, there’s a more than likely chance that these questions will have a Philly slant to them. Here is an example from last year:

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple

Now that you know all about CMEpalooza Trivia Night, make your plans now to join us. There will be snacks. There will be prizes. We’ll be done in time for you to make your dinner reservation. See you in September!

ANSWER KEY: Correct answers in GREEN

Which of the following was NOT mentioned by today’s Outcomes Panel as a way to leverage outcomes to showcase the value of medical education to your organization?

1. Develop a social media campaign 
2. Have a poster gallery day
3. Create quarterly infographic outcomes reports
4. Present outcomes to internal stakeholders

AcademicCME’s Tim Hayes and family vacation every summer in Ocean City, NJ. Which of the following “facts” about OCNJ is true?

1. It is the marlin fishing capital of the world
2. The city bylaws include a prohibition on painting any house within city limits purple
3. It is a “dry town,” prohibiting the sale of any alcohol within city limits
4. It is the birthplace of singer Frankie Avalon

Which one of the following does the Alliance suggest as a way to celebrate Healthcare Education Professionals Day?

1. Host an awards ceremony
2. Send out cards or e-cards
3. Give an extra day off
4. Make a large cash donation to CMEpalooza

Daryl Hall and John Oates, the founding members of Hall & Oates, met while attending which university?

1. Penn
2. Drexel
3. Villanova
4. Temple