As a recently-declared Echols Interdisciplinary Writing major who also happens to be a premed, I frequently get puzzled looks when I tell people what I'm studying here at the University. Nearly everyone comments on the apparent disparity of my two fields of study, and while at first glance they might look completely different, I've found there's no shortage of overlap. Any premed advisor can tell you medical schools tend to encourage non-science majors - balancing pre-medical courses with a different major helps to shape well-rounded medical students.
My major involves poetry, fiction, screenwriting, journalism, nonfiction and playwriting. I chose it because I love to write, and also because U.Va. has some of the best creative writing faculty members in the country.
I didn't really see writing and medicine as such an integrated course path until I began studying here.
In calculus as a high-school senior, I began to see how mathematical principles seemed oddly analogous to life. I especially liked limits as x approaches infinity.
In organic chemistry lab last semester, I began to see life parallels in our experiments as well.
For instance, in a mixed crystallization, two substances are initially present in solution. Upon addition of a third component which mixes well with one existing component, the third - and least miscible - component drops out of solution. It reminded me of how, when we find people or interests that resonate with us more so than components of our existing life situations, the precipitate comes in the form of whatever interest we drop to make room for the new one.
Soon, I started using the image of ether in poems I was writing. Seeing the clear wisps emanating from the diethyl ether container in lab really helped reinforce the meaning - and applicability - of the word "ethereal." "Ether" became a metaphor for anything fleeting or difficult to capture, in words or otherwise.
Perhaps more exciting than seeing poetry in science is bringing science to poetry. I began this odd mixture with a poem about seeing beauty and poetry in science - in this case, horseback riding and thinking of actin and myosin, amino acids and deluges of neurotransmitters which worked beneath the skin to power the pony I rode.
The poem ultimately won an award in a University Art Museum contest, and I decided I wanted to incorporate more science into my poetry.
At one point, I stopped in the middle of typing a lab report, opened a new window in Word Document and typed out a poem about, of all things, writing a lab report. I was fascinated by how seamlessly words such as etherate and benzene translated to verse.
Perhaps the crown jewel thus far in my mixing of poetry and science is a workshop piece done for my poetry class. The assignment was to tell a story about childhood using a non-literary form. I chose a mechanism. Throughout it, some atoms were portrayed as words, leading to a hybrid visual poem/organic chemistry mechanism.
I tried to work in some humor while staying true to actual reactions I incorporated; the birth of my brother was a radical addition reaction, and middle school proceeded with uncertainty - "Exact chemistry is unknown."
I used nucleophilic attack, which broke a pi bond, to signify my tibial fractures sustained in high school.
A difficult senior year was a complex epoxidation reaction. My accident when I arrived at U.Va. was a Diels-Alder reaction, under which I wrote "bonds are broken and reformed - stereochemistry is preserved."
There was a surreal peace in writing out something as abstract and complex as growing up using something as logical and elegant as a chemical mechanism. If anything, though, it strengthened my ability to see life parallels in lab and in lecture, to work acid-catalyzed eliminations and nucleophilic substitutions into my poems.
Thankfully, there is a venue to continue integration of science and poetry long after college is done. The somewhat nascent field of poetry therapy involves using patients' creative expression through writing to help them cope with difficult diagnoses.
As a physician, I hope to also become licensed as a poetry therapist and organize groups where patients can use poetry - whether it be their own or someone else's - to help them through difficult times.
Poetry has helped me get through hard times and I hope I can help someone else discover and harness that power.
Courtney's column runs biweekly Fridays. She can be reached at c.hartnett@cavalierdaily.com.
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