My parents questioned my major choice. My dad, of course, wanted me to go straight to med school (“I know you’re a senior, but if you want to stay a few more years and take the pre-reqs…”), and my mom – well, she smiled and asked me “are you sure?”

I’ve realized that no matter what discipline I end up in, I’m going to have to learn how to think in an interdisciplinary nature. Each text read in an English class ends up discussing a social/political/economic issue. Further, I’m minoring in Medical Humanities and Jewish Studies. My minors, in combination with my major, have led me to pursue a career in end-of-life healthcare, specifically law concerning bioethics and the elderly. So even if I tried my very hardest to avoid thinking this way, it would be impossible. When it comes down to it, the most personal and private pieces of ourselves seem to find their ways into the wide open at the end of life. I’ve worked as a palliative care volunteer for the past few years, sitting by the bedside when someone is dying alone, or providing respite for a family member who just needs to go eat or shower.

Although I’m some random kid, people decide to tell me everything – from stories of their favorite family meals to trauma and abuse stories. Although this is the career I want to go into, there is no possible way to approach it coldly. Every aspect of the job requires delicacy and empathy, or at least an attempt at empathy. I have found that even though I don’t always find the right words, the attempt is worth it. When I see how the patients are treated, I realize why this matters. It’s not that the doctors or nurses are bad people – in fact, they’re absolutely amazing — but the modern American medical system simply focuses on the maximum number of tests and divisions between parts of the body and their corresponding hospital teams, which results in the patient feeling left behind. So how could I, being one bright-eyed kid, do anything about it? Well, it started with reading about the subject – both fiction and non-fiction.

I took a course called Religion, Healthcare, and Ethics, and we read work from bioethics experts, religious experts, and laypeople. Here’s where it all got started – I learned about topics I had never heard of (namely, palliative care and how it’s different from hospice) and re-evaluated my viewpoints. I found my personal religious views challenged, and I was excited. As Jasmine Guillory acknowledges in her TIME article, “Reading Anti-Racist Nonfiction Is a Start. But Don’t Underestimate the Power of Black Fiction,” “[m]ultiple studies have shown that reading certain types of fiction increases a reader’s empathy for others in the world. Fiction gives you a window into both lives you know and recognize and ones you don’t” (Guillory). 

Guillory’s article is specifically about reading Black fiction as an act of anti-racism. She’s 100% right, but her argument expands to helping understand anyone different from you. Whatever your difference, reading about it can give you a better understanding (although not always a correct or close to complete understanding). For me, Atul Gawande’s book Being Mortal was a great start. But one could simply respond: well, that’s your career, not mine, and I need something practical. 

In his New York Times Op-Ed, “Poetry is Hospitable to Strangeness and Surprise,” author Patrick Rosal asks a simple question:

“For whom?”

Who is poetry for, he asks. He continues on, stating that “you may want something ‘practical’” (Rosal). And haven’t each of us heard that a million times – just like the way my dad said it. But it means something different to me. On my first day as a volunteer with palliative care, I didn’t know what to do. I was so nervous that I was sweating through my shirt, and I actually got lost in the hospital. It was terrifying, and the whole time, I was thinking “what if it doesn’t do anything?” “What if I just can’t find the right words?” I always thought that I needed something practical. I asked the few others on the team if they had some sort of guidebook, and they pretty much just laughed at me. 

But what I realized is that the words that we offer are the concrete and practical business. Everyday we interact with people and without proper and effective communication, nothing is going to happen. And further, everyone’s going to feel bad about it. Using the right language is the foundation of a successful process and career.

So maybe I don’t know how to be a surgeon, or how to diagnose an illness, but because of literature, I feel equipped with the everyday decisions as well as the end-of-days decisions.