Contributing Writer and Medical Student Editor
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Jennifer is a second-year medical student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, New Jersey class of 2024. In 2020, she graduated from Brandeis University with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and biology. When not studying medicine, she enjoys reading, baking, and spending time with friends and family. Additional academic interests include medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics.
To fully capture the breadth of medical humanities is simply not possible. In fact, it is all too easy for the medical community to lack an appreciation for all of the ways that the humanities not only complement, but enhance medicine. Medicine — a field so biological and chemical — is often associated with far more rigidity than where the humanities permits the mind to go.
In medicine, very little is black and white. Now, as a medical student who has begun to experience ethical dilemmas in the realm of patient care, I’ve discovered that the ethics of journalists and physicians are more similar than I expected.
Improvement is at the core of who physicians are. If we do not strive to be better versions of ourselves, then we are doing a disservice to our patients who deserve good care. However, in order for medical students and physicians to pursue such a lifelong career of learning, we need to decidedly put aside this idea that we can ever be “perfect.” Medical professionals can never be, as Merriam-Webster defines the word, “entirely without fault or defect.”
None of us pictured beginning medical school in a pandemic. Most of us are still in shock we were admitted to medical school owing to severe imposter syndrome. Despite the exceedingly virtual nature of the fall semester — as of now, our only in-person activities are optional anatomy labs — we have hitherto made the most of this experience. Undeterred by the inability to partake in many in-person activities as a class, we are fostering meaningful relationships with our peers online and in person.
Contributing Writer and Medical Student Editor
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
Jennifer is a second-year medical student at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in Piscataway, New Jersey class of 2024. In 2020, she graduated from Brandeis University with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and biology. When not studying medicine, she enjoys reading, baking, and spending time with friends and family. Additional academic interests include medical education, narrative medicine, and bioethics.
