I was never born to write. I was taught to write. And I am still being taught to write.
Interpretation
Writing is a learned skill, and one continues to grow and improve through education and practice.
This quote by Atul Gawande emphasizes the idea that the ability to write is not an innate talent but rather a skill that is developed through learning and continuous improvement. It highlights the importance of education and the ongoing journey of mastering any craft, including writing, suggesting that even accomplished writers are still in a process of learning and refinement.
In practice
In a writing workshop, I reminded my students that 'I was never born to write' to encourage them to embrace their learning process.
A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it-will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right?-because the difference between triumph and defeat, you'll find, isn't about willingness to take risks. It's about mastery of rescue.
No one teaches you how to think about money in medical school or residency. Yet, from the moment you start practicing, you must think about it. You must consider what is covered for a patient and what is not.
Just using a checklist requires [doctors] to embrace different values from ones we've had, like humility, discipline, teamwork.
When I do an operation, it's half a dozen people. When it goes beautifully, it's like a symphony, with everybody playing their part.
At times, in medicine, you feel you are inside a colossal and impossibly complex machine whose gears will turn for you only according to their own arbitrary rhythm. The notion that human caring, the effort to do better for people, might make a difference can seem hopelessly naive. But it isn't.
We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.
Even in high school, a rule that permits only one point of view to be expressed is less likely to produce correct answers than the open discussion of countervailing views.
Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
Mathematics is being lazy. Mathematics is letting the principles do the work for you so that you do not have to do the work for yourself
Communication of science as subject-matter has so far outrun in education the construction of a scientific habit of mind that to some extent the natural common sense of mankind has been interfered with to its detriment.
After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.
My parents are both college professors, and it made me want to question authority, standards and traditions.
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