Tag: medical school
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Partial eclipse of the heart
Perry DinardoCleveland Heights, Ohio, United States In early August 2017, the nation was buzzing about an upcoming total solar eclipse. I had been immersed in news about the eclipse for weeks, and decided it would be absolutely necessary for me to watch from the “Zone of Totality.” Within this zone, a diagonal path across the…
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Regalia
Nancy L. HagoodCharleston, South Carolina, United States My medical school graduation regalia has hung in my closet for two years. It will never be worn. In spring 2019, I was a fourth-year medical student, planning to graduate in May and move 500 miles north to work as an intern at my first-choice residency program. After…
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Unmasked
Kelley ZhaoStony Brook, New York, United States The lecture hall was freezing on the first day of medical school orientation. The room was buzzing with students meeting one another, and the familiar phrases floated around me as I took my seat. “Where are you from?” “Where did you go for college?” Half of the students…
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What it’s about
Wesley ChouBoston, Massachusetts At coffee-flecked boothsAnd down corridors, wendingA way through the staccato chatter,We guzzle down the details: Oh let me tell you,One fisherman to another,Of fingers turned tassel by a firecracker,Soiled plastic and muffled screams leakingOut a hermetic room that anImplacable observer lords over. We’re in on a dirty game,As if our lives have…
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From here
Rasa RafieColorado, United States In college, we were the top of our class, the winners of scholarships and awards, the leaders of campus organizations. We were the ones our classmates looked up to and the names our teachers used as examples. We worked hard and those efforts delivered results—good grades, MCAT scores, and finally medical…
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A Dickensian medical education
Gregory RuteckiLyndhurst, Ohio, United States My four grandparents were Polish immigrants who came to America in the early twentieth century. They had no formal education, neither in Poland nor in their new home in Chicago, but worked hard and saved money to pay for the college education of their grandchildren. Life was not easy for…
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A quiet night
Henry BairPalo Alto, California, United States It was the end of the week, the middle of the night, and the beginning of my ER shift. All was quiet, and I was studying at the nurses’ station, still riding the high of having just aced a cardiology exam that was widely regarded as one of the…
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Defining medicine
Amira AthanasiosWalnut Creek, California, United States Defining Medicine. The bolded script screamed at me from a massive poster hung six stories high along the side of the university hospital on my first day of medical school. Like most millennials, I pursued medicine with a deep conviction to make a difference. Coming from a humanities background,…
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A jigsaw puzzle
Julia NguyenPhoenix, Arizona, USA Imagine yourself browsing the Entertainment section at the local store. Of all the sections you could possibly be in—Beauty, Grocery, Household, Pharmacy—here you are at the Entertainment section, looking for a jigsaw puzzle. There are so many choices: outdoor scenery or abstract? A 1,000-piece puzzle or just 500? Whatever you choose,…