Headline Stories
Wrapping Up the Community Service Selective
David Einstein, M'11
The Community Service selective: heralded by sandwiches, concluded with pizza, and then something in between. In my recent wrap-up session, we each described our CS selective and our reaction to it. We then struggled to define which settings were the most effective for community service. On one side, a student argued that the CS selective offers an opportunity for medical students to get beyond the medical sphere, to practice interacting with unfamiliar types of people through basketball or tutoring; another student rightly pointed out that more medicine-oriented selectives like Sharewood often enhance the student’s PD skills more than the patient’s health. On the other side, a Sharewood selective student felt that volunteering in a clinic allowed medical students to serve the community using their unique skills, as well as to practice simply listening. Our moderator then phrased this as a debate over the meaning of altruism.
Is Medicine a “Falling-Down” Profession?
David Einstein, M'11
“For lawyers and doctors, gold-embossed diplomas are no longer so golden,” reads the subheadline of Alex Williams’s recent New York Times article “The Falling-Down Professions.” Williams writes of a major trend occurring at college campuses, quoting an NYU career development director, “[students are] focusing now on starring in their own creations, their own start-up businesses.” According to sociologist Richard Florida, flexibility and creativity are the new pillars of success among young people. It followed then that today’s college grads would turn away from the professions which in Williams’s mind most represent traditional success: law and medicine.