Be the Change

Be the change by ~misskat345 on deviantART

Sometimes I feel like I should've accomplished more by now, as if most of the things I did before grad/med school didn't even scratch the surface of significance. I read articles about people around my age doing amazing things, like invent the Embrace infant warmer for premature babies or begin an organization like Invisible Children to aid kids in war-torn Uganda. It almost makes one pause and think, "What have I been doing? What have I done?"

There's a lot to be done, and there's a lot that can be done. As Gandhi said, we must indeed be the change we wish to see in the world. Only in the last few years have I, in some fashion, embraced those words. I used to think that I could only effect change once I become a doctor with real influence. But why necessarily wait that long when there's a lot each of us can do now? The time for action is now.

Granted, most of the med school projects that I'm involved in were "inherited" down to me, but they're worthy projects of their own accord. The first is the Patient Education Program. This program aims to educate patients at a free clinic on ways to better manage and improve their health at home. The second is the Hmong Health Education Program (HHEP). An outgoing M4 left us with a $30,000 grant that he secured to develop the HHEP. The aim is to increase health awareness in the Milwaukee Hmong community through various media efforts such as radio show broadcasts and PSAs. And third is the Health Fair hosted by APAMSA (Asian Pacific American Med Student Association). This event is hosted at a community center in a low-SES area of Milwaukee and focuses on health education, connecting people to community/government resources, free health-related give-aways, and some health screening.

With each program I've had the opportunity to help further develop it and improve upon what was handed down to me. With Patient Education, I think we've finally got something that works well within the clinic. With the HHEP, we've been expanding the program so that (we hope) it reaches more Hmong community members. And though the Health Fair just finished its second year, I hope it becomes an annual event with each year being better than the last.

In one of my last posts, I mentioned how my long-time friend Taylor is starting a non-profit to help further kids' education. This is very quickly becoming a reality, and hopefully soon-ish it'll be ready to get off the ground! He has allowed me to have some involvement and direction of his brainchild, a very great honor.

Lastly, my friend Alicia and I worked on a project for a course in grad school a couple years ago. Our idea was to design the concept for a video game to promote the teaching of genetics. Recently I had lunch with Alicia, who now works across the hall from the professor of that course. He still remembers our project and asks her occasionally when we're going to make it a reality (apparently, it was one of the highlights in that course for him that year). One day! The moment hasn't aligned yet for this, but we promise that one there'll be a video game on genetics. Below are a couple concepts drafted for this project. :-P

Throughout all of this I've learned a few things. One: we can, right now, effect change - however great or small. Two: you can rarely go at it alone, as I've had co-chairs for programs, committee members, and good friends. And three: that it's okay to not be the inception of the change, but to be near that inception and to rally behind a cause is just as rewarding.

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The Schism

Currency of Knowledge by ~VGAce on deviantART

There has been a schism between the arts and the sciences. While still held together in higher education as "Literature, Arts, & Sciences," this seems but a facade, a mere veil hiding the schism that divides the disciplines. Like two sides of a coin, the arts and the sciences no longer seem to see eye-to-eye. Yet at their core they still have the same goals: to seek out knowledge and discover truths.

So often it's a discussion of "the arts vs. the sciences," as if one is superior to the other in defining reality. But I wonder, why have we allowed the two to be divorced from one another? Why have we allowed this schism to take place? Are the arts naive? Do the sciences silence that sense of awe?

When I returned to my hometown for Thanksgiving, I took a moment to stand in the driveway of my house and look up at the clear night sky for the first time in perhaps months. In that moment, looking at the constellation Orion, I felt myself transported back in time. As a kid I had marveled at the stars. I had read about the myths and stories enshrouding the constellations, and seeing what people saw for thousands of years. I read about the composition of stars that made them burn, and about the incomprehensible distances that separate me from the heavens.

Does knowing about the science behind the stars make they any less remarkable? Any less awe-inspiring? To the contrary, it enhances that sense of wonder. I recounted this to Taylor and he told me how he had once went on a trip in northern Michigan. In the isolation of nature, far removed from the light pollution of cities, the world was illuminated solely by starlight on a moonless night. He saw the stars in their most primal splendor, dressed in their whites, reds, oranges, yellows, and blues. And he was at a loss for words to describe the beauty of the Milky Way as it cut its path across the night.

How can knowing the composition of the stars, reducing them to their elements and physics, possibly take anything away? Is not the knowledge that the same elements that created the stars are also responsible for creating the environment on Earth? With regards to the stars, what is their truth? That they can elicit wonder and an almost religious awe in people is a truth. That they, separated by distances unimaginable, burn in the vacuum of space with the same intensity as our sun is also a truth.

And a week ago I had a discussion with a few people (over wine and cheese) about the humanities and the sciences within medicine. That the humanities can teach us so much about people - our patients - is true. That the sciences make up the pillars of technology that now allow us to treat formerly terminal illnesses is also true. Can we not, then, marry the two for the betterment of the patient? Too often we utilize science in medicine "reduce" patients to a list of symptoms and their bodies to a machine to be managed and fixed. Perhaps we should take a moment to step back and just marvel at the science behind human body, and (in perhaps a twisted way) at the diseases that afflict us. Perhaps we should remember that patients are people.

It's unlikely to bridge the gap caused by the schism, it has gone on for far too long. But no matter how great the distances separate the arts from the sciences - even as far as between us and the stars - they cannot become fully divorced from one another. They are two sides of the same coin, and though they see the world in opposite directions like the Roman god, Janus, they both see the same things: knowledge, truth, and reality.

As written on the University of Michigan's seal, "Artes, Scientia, Veritas." Arts, Science, Truth.

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