Summer Undergraduate Research Program - Fred Hutchinson ...

them. Yet, the best doctors are not stayed by these boundaries. Surely, one of the
ultimate rewards of a physician’s training is the power to heal and provide comfort.
In this sense, my rediscovery of medicine started with waitressing at the Café and in
the laboratory. Through science, I learned how to pursue a problem, apply the
theory I learned in the classroom, and hone my critical thinking skills. Research also
showed me that sometimes, even the most elegant hypotheses and experiments fail.
Through my experience in the clinic, I found that doctors too, face a similar
fundamental challenge: Sometimes, despite the most accurate diagnoses, patients do
not get better. In research, these failures, although disheartening, do not diminish
the excitement of discovery and in medicine, the failures are reconciled through
astonishing recoveries and the power of the storied human connection between
patient and physician. I also began to see how medicine might allow me to combine
this interest in the sciences with those interactions I came to value through my work
at the XX Café.
In the span of sixteen years, my view of medicine has evolved. As a child, I
considered medicine to be a perfect practice that could transcend war. As I matured,
I learned that medicine, while in many ways powerful, is a taxing and trying
profession, inherently as imperfect as those who practice it and those who seek
healing. I also saw that it is the humanity of medicine combined with the science
that strengthens it that makes it so miraculous, leaving room for the extraordinary
discoveries and connections between people. It is this possibility for the incredible
that draws me to medicine.
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