A Fish Made of Chalk

It was Thursday morning. I was exhausted. The night before had been spent reading and studying to prepare for my full day of lecture. The fact that I was sitting in my favorite lecture of the semester helped just a bit.

And then, another unsuspecting teacher shows up. Except he’s a fish. And a fish made of chalk, no less.

Our class, a spinoff of our laboratory meetings, was charged with examining the dichotomy and creating a key for seven fish pictured on the LCD projector. Having done a few of these in preparation for an upcoming quiz, I finished fairly quickly, and I looked at the beauty that is the dace, a fairly common fish, with quite a bit of variety. Some students had questions: “What is the underside of a fish called?” “What is the fin nearest the end of the fish’s body called?” To answer all of the questions at once, the teacher began to draw a diagram of the fish, labeling each fin and side of the fish. “Cahdal, ventral, dorsal, lateral.” As he approached the anal fin, he asked, “What is the fin close to? What can you tell me about its name?” A student yells the in an accent that let me, a native Georgian, know that she was a native Georgian as well.

The first lesson that my friend made of chalk taught me was that medicine is all about anatomy. To ensure that the right procedures, treatments, and other such things are taking place, I must learn where they go and the physiology of each bone and muscle and tendon and everything that makes up the body.

Secondly, I learned how important it is to laugh and to have fun. This training process is grueling, but I couldn’t be more honored to be carving this pathway. There will be times where I don’t like what I’m doing or that I wish I had time to rest and to rejuvenate, but it’s always important to laugh and to have a good time doing your job, no matter what that may mean for you or those around you.

Thirdly, I learned that dichotomy is the same thing as a differential diagnosis, almost. As you work your way down the list, you add and eliminate certain illnesses, treatments, and other options, just as you do when classifying living organisms. It is absolutely astounding tog me that I am seeing so much of a correlation between what I’m doing now and what I will be doing in the future. It feels as though everything I do from here on out matters somewhere, and that’s a rare find in most career paths.

To think, if a fish made of chalk can teach me this much about becoming a doctor, I am learning from each and every experience. What does the next one hold? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m sure it’s not too far away!