Da Vinci Surgical Robot, from Danbury CT, is looking forward to joining his peers on the afternoon of January 23 for a few hours of quiet reflection and ophthalmology training.
“I think it’s really great that we get to press pause once a month, come together, and reflect on all we’ve been learning, on how all this is changing us, on how the process of vocational discernment is affecting us positively or negatively,” says Da Vinci Surgical Robot between sips of Dunkin’ Donuts Dark Roast. “Even though medicine is ostensibly ‘about,’ you know, ‘other people,’ there’s a certain solipsism to the third year experience – focused as one is on how one’s praxis is affecting one’s self, projecting those affects forward onto a future that is entirely one’s own – and these afternoons do just enough to bring me out of all that, to remind me that there are a bunch of us who are in this together, and we’ll soon be joining a bunch of others who have been there before.”
Da Vinci Surgical Robot is especially looking forward to checking in on friends he hasn’t seen in a while. “It’s an exciting time. People are starting to decide how they’re going to be spending the next 40 years of their lives.” Da Vinci Surgical Robot credits the upcoming session’s PTTP blog post assignment for bringing this to the fore. “What are your values? What do you want from your professional life? What do you want from your home life? These are the questions.”
Da Vinci Surgical Robot shares an excerpt from his own post. “Priority 1: do surgeries.” When pressed about what other sorts of things Da Vinci Surgical Robot is looking for either professionally or personally, Da Vinci Surgical Robot becomes quiet, then the hum of internal processing amplifies in fits and starts until a tendril of smoke emanates from the lubricated jointspace of Da Vinci Surgical Robot’s anamatronic arm. Da Vinci Surgical Robot replies after a moment, a note of anguish imperceptible in the monotone, “I want to play bass in the Chuck E. Cheese’s band,” and projects a hologram of a space princess asking to be helped. A black monolith then appears and nothing is the same again.