“On your mark! Get set! Go!” the gruff voice of Coach Stuart Dummkopf echoed across the gymnasium of Haughty High School as a dozen highschoolers began that dreaded event known across the United States to those students enrolled in Physical Education classes: the mile run. The students quickly separated into visible groups as the race carried on. The jocks in the lead, followed closely by the preps (these put great pride in being physically beauteous which included jogging at insane hours of mornings and evenings). Tailing the preps were punks, then the band kids, and the stoners. In the back were those students who weren't terribly physically fit, had little or no interest in sports, and spent most of their spare time with technology, schoolwork, and books. These students (or student as she was the only of her kind Coach Dummkopf's class) were only in the class because it was required for graduation and skipping the class would wreck being in National Honor Society and find a way to vandalize the GPA of a 4.0 student.
Ardena Noscio wasn't overweight by any means. She wasn't particularly weak, either. Ardena simply didn't fit the definition of “physically fit,” or “hand-eye coordinated” either, for that matter. She was one of the above mentioned students who spent her time on furthering her knowledge and keeping her 4.0 as it was; she was an aspiring doctor and she planned on curing some horrific disease, if she got the chance that is. In order to find the cure for the horrific disease (it didn't matter what disease, it could be any disease, so long as it was so far incurable and meant certain death) Ardena would have to be accepted to a prestigious medical university, and for that to happen, she would have to keep her 4.0, which was in grave danger, and kept becoming more so every minute she ran. Ardena was failing her gym class.
At Haughty High School, P.E. classes were graded on several accounts: effort, skills, and participation, all equally weighted. Ardena participated and tried. She dressed out every day, and she gave her full effort, but she only had a forty-three percent in the class. As hard as she tried, Ardena's skills grade remained at zero. But what about effort? Coach Dummkopf's faulty logic (doubtlessly rattled by a few too many football tackles, for which the school was notoriously proud, by the way) ran something along these lines: Any kid who can't come within twenty feet of the archery target, who can't even hit a golf ball, who can't even hit a single bowling pin can't be trying, no matter how much they pretend to look like they are. But he thought he'd be nice and give her ten percent for effort anyway.
Naturally this was quite far from the mark, even farther than Ardena's arrows from the archer's target, seeing as how she was trying and trying harder than most teenagers try for anything. But the story must continue.
The weeks crawled by more slowly than a snail, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, and step by step. At midterm, Ardena saw her grade and went to see her counselor.
“I'm sorry Ardena, but I can't do anything about it. Physical Education is a required course. You'll just have to try harder,” the counselor insisted. But no matter how much Ardena tried to explain that it wasn't possible for her to try any harder and that she really wasn't learning anything about physiology (except that running made her entire body ache), she could neither get out of the class nor get the counselor to propose changing the name of the class to the school board.
Ardena continued to dress out and give her full effort. She also continued her record winning streak of being the most athletically challenged person on the face of the Earth, and thus also persisted in receiving a forty-three percent. Fortunately for Ardena, there was a written final worth up to twenty-five percent of the final grade and Ardena aced it, giving her a final grade of sixty-eight percent, which was passing, if only barely. A “D-” didn't do anything help get Ardena into Harvard, but it did give her the compulsory credit for the class so she wouldn't have to partake in the torturous event of P.E. another term. “Compulsory” is a word which here means “required to graduate from high school but neither useful in the real world nor needed by any of the universities Ardena was hoping to attend.”
In her senior year, Ardena had taken every Advanced Placement class offered by Haughty High School, had tried her absolute most, had attended school every day, and never missed a single assignment; nevertheless, her 4.0 GPA was a lost cause, dead and buried, cold and unrestorable. Ardena had to settle on a state university where she attended medical school in spite of her GPA disappointment and became a specialist in lethal diseases, never losing sight of the hope to find a cure, even though she had little or no time for research. As Dr. Noscio (as she was now known) looked through the files of her newly appointed patients, she came across a name that was familiar. Familiar and painful. This was a name that caused a shiver to run up her spine and her upper lip to involuntarily curl into a sneer. The file read “Stuart Thomas Dummkopf” and immature as it seemed, she couldn't help but giggle at his initials and think how his being born almost qualified as a sexually transmitted disease.
–Ardena! Be professional! She thought to herself. –You can't go thinking things like this about patients whether you know them or not (even if they are your mortal enemy). You took the Hippocratic Oath, and in doing so swore to do your best to help people. Grow UP!
Stuart Dummkopf had developed a relatively unheard-of disease that came from blowing track whistles too much, too loud, and too long. It mostly affected the respiratory system, particularly the lungs and throat, but in the more extreme cases, which is what Dummkopf had developed, the hearing was also greatly effected (usually resulting in hearing nonexistent sounds) and once the disease had progressed (which Dummkopf's had, but not too far, as of his first appointment with Dr. Noscio) the brain became “rattled” in a sense and thought processes, often slow to begin with in coaches, became even slower.
Needless to say, Ardena couldn't do much to help Mr. Dummkopf, since she could only recommend the treatment to slow the progression of the disease, rather than prescribe a cure as no cure had been found. Poor Dummkopf slowly lost his mind (or what mind there was to begin with) and after no more than 68 months (ironically, Ardena's final score in his class), Stuart Dummkopf passed from this world, hopefully to a happier place where he could play football all the time, to his little heart's content.
Ardena Noscio continued her job at the hospital, unhappy as she was, because even though she couldn't help the way she wanted to, by finding cures for fatal illnesses, she found some small joy in helping the patients she did get.

In a universe almost exactly parallel to ours, girl named Ardena Noscio was Valedictorian of her class, (she had managed to keep her 4.0 as Physical Education was not a required course in Universe Prime) and received a scholarship to Harvard University Prime. She graduated the medical program with honors and in less than 8 years of research had found the cures for almost 30 fatal illnesses, one of which being a rare one that commonly effected coaches who had a fondness for whistle blowing.