A Lifetime Student of Medicine
Where do I begin? / Skimming her list of diagnoses, my eyes are drawn to her pancreatic cancer. / Confused, I glanced back at her age / I was not mistaken, she just turned 49.
Off the Shelf
Off the Shelf is our section for creative works by medical students.
Contributing Writer
Florida State University College of Medicine
Lyndsey is a fourth-year medical student at Florida State University College of Medicine in Tallahassee, FL Class of 2023. In 2017, she graduated from Florida State University with a Bachelor of Science in biological science with a minor in chemistry. She enjoys traveling, cooking, hiking, and working out in her free time. After graduating from medical school, Lyndsey plans to pursue a career in radiology.
American Pride
American pride — from our pride we should hide, / for it’s caused us to hate, despise, and decry
Doing
Deadlines rush on, relentlessly. / Another email signed, / “Best regards.”
DVTs
Studying blood clots / While I sit for hours on end / Affixing my own.
You
You’ve taken everything / Nothing is left
Circle of Life
Screams. Tears. Despair. / A sense of sadness in the atmosphere.
Uvalde
Uvalde / I hear the cries of children as they play at the school across the street / They are joyful and exuberant as they play in the Texas heat / unaware of the fear that will soon be unleashed
A Clinical Outing
The hospital room is / fair, square, sterile — / by its vapid / medical posters / and lusterless hospital tools.
The Worth of the Humanities
Ruchica Chandnani, Class of 2024 at the Arkansas College of Osteopathic Medicine, contributes this poem as an in-Training writer and current managing editor of the publication since 2021.
Relief
Tears for the dead, tears for the living / who persist in this world that is so unforgiving
Forgive Me
In my white coat, / I ask for forgiveness. / Forgive me, / to the weary homeless man
When Art and Medicine Collide (2022)
Nita Chen, MD, movement disorders fellow at the Normal Fixel Institute for Neurological Disease, contributes this graphic medicine piece as a former in-Training writer, editor, columnist and featured artist for our print book in-Training: Stories from Tomorrow’s Physicians, Volume 2.
Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus
University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute
Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, she spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.