By Jasmine Elliott

Auricle Annual Writing Competition 2018: Pre-clinical Runner-up

‘Toughen up,’ ordered the grade 6 teacher at the student upset with their C in a history assignment they had spent hours on.

‘Just let it go, who cares?’ laughed a friend when the year 9 student came to them, frustrated with the bullying that permeated their friendship group.

‘You’ll never be a good doctor if you care so much about everything,’ shared the doctor who had spent the prior twenty minutes lecturing the year 12 student about how they didn’t suit the medical profession.  

‘The people who don’t care as much always do better,’ reflected a friend after the year 12 student told them about yet another application that fell through.

‘Maybe you should take a leaf from their books.’

And so I did. I took their leaves and transplanted them into my metaphorical tree. I began to shift my perspective; from valuing the act of caring, to seeing sensitivity as a flaw, something that had and would continue to hold me back. I would still care… a little. I would distance myself; close enough that I would do well, but detached enough that when things inevitably fell apart, I could immediately bounce back and keep looking forward. I would no longer be seen as weak and malleable, but strong and steady.

Sweaty palms and shaky knees transformed from fear to fuel. A composed face and rehearsed smile would surpass any expression of weakness. Tears were a waste of hydration and hope always meant there was further to fall. Rejection would no longer shatter me into a million pieces, but barely leave a mark.

All of this fell into place for a perfect millisecond. I was stoic, composed and immoveable.

But I was denying myself.

Is this what success looked like? A chain of hidden vulnerability. A pursuit of insensitivity. A journey to diminished feeling. An escape of emotional investment.

As Hannah Gadsby reflects in Nanette, ‘Why is insensitivity to strive for? Why is sensitivity a particularly bad thing?’  Yes, big dreams and self-investment may have made me more prone to falling, but also had the potential to build me up. Yes, helping others sometimes meant I didn’t help myself, but in another sense helping others does help me. It’s a source of growth, of personal fulfilment and an integral part of my identity.

My caring too much had proven to be a problem, but not caring couldn’t be the solution; it’s not a choice, but something I had to compromise with. Doing well could no longer be analogous with my supply of oxygen, but I still needed to inhale hope and exhale hard work to survive.

My caring too much, my sensitivity, are part of who I am. My ambition may fling me into the depths of failure, but it’s also my propellant into the heights of fulfilment. As soon as I tried to skirt around the feelings of loss, disappointment and sadness, the other end of the spectrum became fractured.  

My caring too much, my vulnerability, makes me human, and this humanity isn’t a weakness but an asset. It’s the seed from which passion and dedication grows. It’s what makes both failure and success real. It drives me to do what I do, to study medicine and work to create change – we just have to make sure our hands are firmly gripping the steering wheel.

Everyone made the act of caring so binary; you care, or you don’t. I thought that sensitivity was either intrinsically good, or intrinsically bad.

This is the advice I received.

It’s become so clear that caring is not an on/off switch, but a dial in our machinery, one that we learn to control with time. An inflated balloon may burst at the touch of a needle, but without air it will never rise.

This is the advice I wish I had taken.

By Brendan Stevenson

Auricle Annual Writing Competition 2018: Pre-clinical Winner

The closet is a strange land of diverse ideologies, trending political beliefs and outdated social norms. It’s a cluttered space to hide our skeletons and to store our gifts. It can be impossible to remember why you came here and, for some of us, impossible to figure out how to leave. That all changed for me the day an eclipsing slice of light peered from beneath the door, illuminating my surrounds. That rectangle of light became a shoreline and the world beyond it an ocean: An enigma whose waves tugged at my feet but whose depths I would seemingly never experience. My fingertips creeped beneath the door as I grasped for answers and probed the perimeters of the unknown, but it wasn’t enough. I mustered all my courage, placed my quaking hand on the door handle and stepped into the light. I interlaced my hands and placed my thumb and index finger above my head, exalting this illusory weapon of strength towards my higher self as I dived into the openness. After blasting through the surface, I was suspended in the murky waters of self-doubt and words left unspoken. I waited for a response, hanging suspended by the makeshift rope of strength I had constructed.

Shortly after, the silence was filled with the echoing words “It’s just a phase”. This was the blade that cut my rope and sent my head spinning. My fragile beliefs were shattered into indistinguishable fractals, scattered into the wind above me as I swam back to the shoreline. For many years I cast stones of fantasies into the future, longing to put the pieces back together, watching as missed opportunities rippled into the horizon. For me, this is what it felt like to come out of the closet. Those words are etched into the pages of my narrative like a watermark, the story never to be read the same again. I regret taking these words as a gospel and rejecting my identity as this cultivated a willingness to be shaped by the razor-sharp edges of rigid ideologies. This became a habit of commodifying my soul for social currency. The curation of an idealistic self to meet the expectations of others is act of daily mask wearing, constant tongue biting and facial flushing. It is building a life upon the emotional rubble of denial which widens the gaping abyss between truth and lies.

It can be impossible to live stranded on an island or locked in the dark. Yet our society raises the tides and bolt down doors with ideas of normalcy and a fear of the unknown. These closets are not unique to sexuality and gender, but apply to race, religion and any individualistic trait of self-identification. The danger of self-denial is not merely the truth that keeps us trapped, but instead the wider cognitive framework that it encompasses. It has taken many years to reject those words and to comprehend that even our idols may not understand us, and that we may not understand ourselves, and that’s ok. There is often a moment in our lives when we realise that these walls that entomb us are mere lines in the sand. In my case it was realising that I was shackled by comfortability, wrapped tightly by fear of exposure and controversy. Today this is no longer the case. Instead I wield the flame of individuality and set alight to the pages of my history in an effort to incinerate the parasitic dogmas which plague our societal narrative. This revolution begins with a spark, a toe in the ocean or a hand on a doorknob, and ends in a roaring fire. It is the melting away of masks like candle wax, returning their malleable like clay for us to shape into our own works of art.

I am not suggesting that piercing the veil of cognitive biases and unbolting doors is an easy process. Yet once the flames settle a phoenix will rise from the ashes, a symbol of freedom and liberation that will take our society to great heights. To a land where doors no longer exist and oceans can be traversed. As medical professionals, friends and parents we are in the position to float a raft to anyone who may be drowning or stranded. I urge you to consider the oceans, the shorelines and the flames that reside behind closed doors, and to nourish the strength it takes to leap into the unknown. By alchemising our biases into a precious stone like state we can harness the kaleidoscopically vibrant light of individualism, because in the dark a rainbow goes unseen, even if it is just a transient “phasic” beauty.

By David Chen

 

Medical school can be stressful. In the preclinical years, we are bombarded with mountains of lectures that leave us feeling constantly behind. When we finally enter our Continue reading →