17 August 2022

Trying my hand at this

When I was in 3rd grade, I wanted to grow up to be either a librarian or a soccer player. I was a vociferous reader - one of those students who couldn’t bear to put a book down even while walking the school hallways. But I never grew up to be a writer, instead choosing to hone my skills in the sciences and maths. When I became interested in pursuing medicine, however, I became keenly aware that understanding science tells you very little about human experiences, reveals almost nothing about the complexity of pain and suffering and healing, and does not provide a template for how to be a good physician. I turned toward anthropology and sociology, and there I found writers and scholars who beautifully and clearly articulated all of the things that science could not, who looked at the social embeddedness of human experiences of health and pain as well as how violence on human bodies and populations are reproduced at systemic levels.

In discovering this academic field - medical anthropology - I began to aspire to be a physician and a medical anthropologist. But - writing has always intimidated and still intimidates me. What if I write something ignorant or naive? Something that I would look back upon and then wish I could scrub from the internet or from my advisor’s eyes? In my professional and academic career so far, I’ve obsessed over every possible word choice and if it aptly conveys the story I am trying to tell, and I have had a deep aversion to showing people my writing until I have deemed it acceptable. I have known that the only way I will become better and more comfortable in writing is to write more, and not just for school, but I haven’t known what to write about; have yet to actually commit to writing consistently.

I’m taking this opportunity of going to a new and unfamiliar country to challenge myself to write, not only for myself - to get over the fear of writing something wrong or imperfect - but also to keep in touch with all of my friends, loved ones, and mentors who will not be there with me. While my work experiences will likely develop my quantitative and technical skills, I hope writing on this blog will nurture my ability to tell stories and make connections between my observations, my reflections, and the literature (where relevant). I hope - and I believe - that I will become a more perceptive, understanding, and caring human in the process. Here’s to learning and growing immensely in the next year.

MB

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