Down Days and Tough Times
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Miami or Bust!
(Chapter Eleven, Jennifer Arnold)
“At the University of Miami interview, I faced the hardest set of questions I have ever been asked, but not for the reasons you would think. The two physicians conducting the interview, a trauma surgeon and an internal medicine doctor, wasted no time in addressing the elephant in the room, and the interview quickly became focused on my size, or lack thereof.
How, with my stature, was I going to take care of patients? How did I drive a car? If I became a trauma surgeon, how was I going to be able to do all the things required of me? I actually felt under attack. “I am not going into medicine with any interest of putting a patient in harm’s way,” I replied. “That would defeat the purpose.”” (Arnold 129). BackgroundPrior to this passage Jen was trying to get into medical school. She was looking for schools with great neonatology departments. When Jen was speaking to the president of the University of Miami (whom she had become great friend with over the course of her attendance there for undergrad), he was saddened to find out that she had been rejected from their medical school. Not much of a coincidence that two days after speaking with the university’s President, Jen was called in for an interview to come to the University of Miami. Jen believe that the Presidents acts were kind, but she wishes that she would have been able to get an interview on her own merits.
AnalysisI chose this passage, because I believes that it greatly shows how people are judged due to their physical outlook. The two physicians both automatically judge Jen because she was a little person. That was probably the reason that she got rejected from the school too; before the President called to say that she was equally qualified as a “normal” tall person, the admissions persons probably judged her because they knew she was a little person.
The passage also revealed the ignorance to Jen’s feelings that the two physicians had during her interview. The questions that they were asking seem a bit derogatory toward Jen. Jen even describes it as her feeling “attacked” during the interview. The physicians made Jen feel so uncomfortable about being a little person that she even used the word “attack.” In the passage it is also revealed that the physicians thought of Jen as being less capable because she is a little person; they wondered how she was going to be able to fulfill the acts required of her as a doctor too. Reflecting on the passage, I realized the harm that someone can feel for being put down by another person; Jen was being put down by the two physicians. I realized that it is improper to judge someone based on their outlook. Similar to Jen, I realized that you have to believe in yourself and not let the mean words of others around you hurt you. We all have to act like Jen. When others want to put us down, we must realize that what they think about us and are capabilities is nothing true to who we are and what we know we are capable of. (Jen went to a school that actually chose her on her own merits and is currently the medical director of the Simulation Center at Texas Children’s Hospital.) |