Ethan Cheng
I think the best part of starting any creative project is choosing a name. The exercise of naming something provides starting and/or inflection points within the design process. For me, ruminating on what to call something has always been an approachable method to getting a project off the ground – it’s like having a reusable runway!
To do this, one must consider the word’s current and past meanings, and how well it can “hold” the meaning you will add to it. It’s like designing your own article of clothing—the more you put into it, the more it reflects you. By summarizing my internal debate over our name, I’m reflecting back the kind of thinking we’ve put into the blog as a whole, as well as presenting a sample of the thoughtful, reflective style we hope to establish and maintain.
The pre-med path is a narrow and well-defined one, without much room for creative expression and exploration. It can feel as those there is an endless checklist of requirements to fill as you go through each successive level; your timeline is essentially 4 years, apply and refresh, 4 years, apply refresh, 4 years, apply and refresh, residency, career. There doesn’t feel like there is a lot of time for developing something that lasts, outside of a career. Medicine requires discipline, accountability, and dedication; the frontline challenges of the pre-med path reflect this. But these college years are likely the most exciting, free, and creative times of our lives. When and where else will we get to study anything we want, write about what we want, start new groups (or blogs), and begin to form your “identity”, irrespective of major, career, or label? Why should we keep our heads down looking at the road?
With these thoughts in mind, why The Scribe? The role of medical scribes is described as a “paraprofessional (look it up!) . . . who specializes in charting physician-patient encounters in real-time, such as during medical examinations” (Wikipedia). Many pre-med students who scribe describe it as an immersive and transformative co-curricular experience.
While scribing can be a starting point for a career in medicine, I initially didn’t think it was the right name– but I was the exception. Most of our team found “The Scribe” succinct and clever, as it references both journalism and medical training while calling back to a time before mass printing, a time of parchment and Hippocratic Oaths. Kevin Tu also added, “It’s a cute name.”
But when considering the concept of “para-profession”, “the scribe” may also suggest passive observation, unoriginality, mindless copying, being a layer removed from the real interpersonal interaction, and working in the shadow of what one is trying to become. This may be an overly negative assessment, but parsing out the possible interpretations is a generative exercise. We aren’t, or don’t want to be, passive recorders or careerists. We aren’t doctors-in-training or wannabe professional journalists. For this blog, we don’t have to try to be anything but ourselves.
So then why are we called “The Scribe”? We can go deeper. The etymology of the word “scribe” is complex and comes from the Latin root, scribe (to write), and traces to words such as describe, prescribe, and scribble (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary) . The name can be an attractive starting point as we try to move between the set meanings of “scribe/scribing” in medical terminology and training, and the expansive array of words, roles, and meanings that the original (root) word inspired. This better captures the spirit of independent expression and agency I want for the blog. I began to see the name as having two parts; the initial cleverness and recognizability of the name pull the readers in, but the themes in our content go beyond the initial draw.
Thus, we can place the blog at the transition from “heads down” training to self-inquiry, from overdetermined endpoints to more ambiguous and complex purposes, and from exclusively medically focused to more broadly applicable presentations of the student experience.
To achieve this with the blog, it means not just summarizing AMSA’s GBMs and service/project events, but providing the member’s authentic, subjective reactions and reflections on what they experienced.
It means spreading insightful personal advice that is also formalized and clear, meeting our new and old members, and presenting unique interdisciplinary opportunities outside of medicine.
It means having a space for opinions and reflections on the deeper, latent meanings that need to be recognized and written about.
It means celebrating the many creative and fun distractions available to procrastinating students, while also exploring why they aren’t entirely unproductive.
It means curating and presenting original visual content, like memes, cartoons, and photos, that captures and complements all the above in images.
Designing and crafting a name is a microcosm of the process of creating the whole work. Sometimes I wonder if we can split all writers (i.e. authors, journalists, poets) into two general groups- those who think of the title or name after the body of the work has been written, and those who think of it during or before. Maybe we can call the former group “encapsulators”, and the latter “predictors” or “promisers”. Isn’t that what we are doing here? Making a promise?
It’s a promise to capture and enrich this subjective experience, this pre-med journey.
Ethan Cheng is a junior Biological Sciences PHNB major from Bethesda, MD. He is interested in exploring the interconnected nature of all kinds of knowledge and expanding this blog project further!
Postscript:
Speaking of promises, you know how you see initials with hearts around them traced into the sidewalk? It’s a little like that. We’re writing our name in wet cement before it hardens forever…
Why do so many names have the word “the” in them (i.e. The New York Times)? “The” is used as a function word to indicate that the following noun or noun equivalent is a unique or a particular member of its class (Merriam Webster Online Dictionary). So in a way, “the” is a “uniquifier”, a pointed way to make something special and imply significance and gravitas.
With names, it’s not always a question of originality either. First names and surnames are repeated often. How many famous singers or companies have (re)defined a word that didn’t exist, (or was rarely used before- see Google)? How many have added a layer of their own meaning onto a more common name or word (Apple and Queen come to mind for me)? Bringing this concept of rewriting or overwriting closer to home, this is also not the first time AMSA has worked on a blog called “The Scribe” (more to come on that…).
Instead of swish and rinse, find puzzle piece.
Commentary from Kevin: His analogies can be a little stretched, but just stay with him and nod. It usually makes him happy.
Commentary From Ethan: Kevin doesn’t know this, but he won’t be with the blog project much longer.
The Scribe 