“Hold it with your hand straight and your wrist loose,” my father said, positioning my hand properly over the coconut half. “Like that.”
Today, in the latest moment in a series of at-home pandemic-induced lessons with my family, I got a crash-course lesson in puttu preparation and coconut scraping. Using the old coconut scraper that my family had been using ever since I was a baby, I began to turn the handle and watched as flakes of coconut scrapings slowly dropped into the bowl below the coconut I was holding.
Frustrated over my lack of success with the coconut, I surrendered the machine and the coconut to my father and watched in awe as he easily churned out coconut scrapings. “How do you not get bored, Appa?” I asked. “Doing such a mundane task?”
My dad laughed. “What do you mean? This is just the first coconut.”
“Well, you have three more coconuts. How do you not get bored?”
He shrugged. “If you have to do it, you do it. No one else is going to do it for me. If I don’t do it, no one will. Do you think I enjoy it? Not really. Just concentrate and get it done.”
Just concentrate and get it done.
Many students on the premedical track have embraced this philosophy as they undergo the trials necessary to get into a medical school. The Harvard Pre-Medical Student Handbook delineates multiple paths for completing what can turn into nearly 14 classes worth of requirements, filling out a student’s schedule up until senior year, with some paths even requiring additional summer classes. Biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and even some psychology and sociology are all tested on the MCAT, one of the many hurdles to overcome before medical school.
However, the conveyor belt of pre-med life isn’t just limited to these classes. Clinical experience, research experience, and leadership abilities are all required on a medical school application. This laundry list of requirements sometimes forces you to dedicate your entire life to medicine and “getting in” — like your undergraduate life is just an overhaul of your high school one.
As a result, the grind of being a pre-med student can feel monotonous and crushing. Stepping into a pre-med-filled lecture or an orgo lab sometimes feels like a world of transactional friendships and momentary glimpses into a future of one-track minds, even if that’s not the reality. Student organizations can sometimes feel like spiritless resume builders rather than true change-makers. Such a demanding and strenuous academic lifestyle makes it easy for one to characterize themself as a STEM kid without getting the chance to step off the “conveyor belt” and intellectually explore without consequences. Although it is important to get health experience before you enter medical school, the very fact that the systems are intended to churn out health professionals often robs us of multi-faceted and authentic connections to the health industry, stripping away the dynamics intrinsic to the field.
In fact, several students have cited this regimented culture as reason for them to drop the track entirely. And while it may be true that these requirements are necessary hurdles because they supposedly test interest in and aptitude for the sciences, must they really be so rigid and brutal? After all, the trope of pre-meds only sitting in classes for the grade probably comes from the class only being there to check that box.
I believe that it is essential to balance individual passion and exploration with the pre-med track. In speaking with professionals in medicine, I have seen firsthand how diverse the field really is, and how different it can be from what it may seem to be from med school applications and MCAT questions. Writing and healthcare intersect, wet lab research and therapeutics intersect, ethnic studies and healthcare outcome overlap, and even engineering and health technology affect each other. Doctors conduct research and lead labs, nurses write books, and surgeons discuss poetry. Ultimately, cooperation with healthcare professionals are essential in any solution to poverty, homelessness, hunger, and even systemic racism.
The unilaterally necessary skills of problem solving and critical thinking don’t have to be learned solely in the orgo lab room, either. What about English concentrators and their propensity for creativity and their ability to assess everyday problems in the same way they analyze literature and words? What about historians and their understanding of overarching trends and themes in human and scientific history? What about social studies students and their ability to consider the patient holistically, through a framework of the social problems they might face and the infrastructure that society may or may not provide them? It’s true that neuroscience and all the biological sciences can teach critical thinking skills, but there is immense value in doing extracurricular activities or taking classes in places you might never have looked.
When we all were kicked off campus last spring and I returned home, I began to remember the reasons why I was studying and going to college in the first place, reasons that had been forgotten in the crush of over-achieving that can characterize many of the mindsets on campus, especially those of Harvard pre-meds. Although I felt stuck in a rut, somewhat lonely, and a bit like I’d travelled back in time, the truth was that facing my young self and all of my former plans had made me embarrassed of the person I’d become — a person who focused solely on fitting into the world of medicine and keeping up with her peers that she’d forgotten what made her stand out in the first place.
This is not an argument in favor of permanent virtual schooling. But this is an argument in favor of breaks. An argument in favor of downtime, in favor of individuality, in favor of the idea that you are not just a transcript or a resume, that you are a whole person. This is an argument in favor of the possibility of being a conscientious citizen, a functioning adult, a confident baker, a happy reader, a creative writer, a passionate artist, or just a bad dancer, while also being a good student. This is an argument for learning how to scrape the coconut with your father and feeling that you can and should value that time.
I’m sure that some people are enjoying the fast-paced pre-medical life, and I wish I had that mental fortitude, optimism, and prowess. However, the culture at large is not exactly open and encouraging for everyone, especially not for first-generation students, low-income students, and students of color who already find themselves underrepresented in the medical field.
Change starts small. It starts with genuine, person-focused dialogue rather than stilted, goal-oriented conversation. It starts with fellow students being honest and ceasing awkward competition. It starts from peers and advisors and works its way up to the top tiers of the academic institution. It starts with clear-cut explanations, destruction of myths, open doors, and opportunities to excel as a full person, rather than as just a pre-med. It starts with “who are you?” and “how are you?” rather than “here’s what you have to do.”
The true value of what makes a person who they are comes from who they are between the boxes on the checklist. True learning and personal growth comes from these moments between the stress. One should have a family. One should have a life. One shouldn’t have to hide who they are to get further in life.
In theory, the multi-step process for becoming a medical professional allows students to have time to explore and become an actual person. Undergraduate studies is the last chance for students to study something completely unrelated to or in the life sciences. But if we keep pressing on this “conveyor belt” lifestyle for pre-meds, from the moment they step on campus to the moment they step off of it, then where is this chance for growth? The “checklist” mindset perhaps needs to shift into a “check life” one.
So learn how to scrape the coconut. Make puttu. Learn what puttu even is. Dance, even if you’re bad at it. And know that I’m dancing, too.
Image by Louis Hansel is licensed under the Unsplash License.
