Why Harvard's Not Exactly My Thing

The first -- and last -- patient I told that I was going to Harvard was a man with an abscess on his left buttock. At the time, I was a fourth year medical student, working in a general surgery clinic in Linville (pronounced "Lin-vole"), North Carolina.

Dr. Tate was teaching me how to perform an incision and drainage, a routine office procedure. After we finished, the patient asked me what type of medicine I wanted to practice. I told him, "I'm going to be a general surgeon like Dr. Tate, but I'm taking a year off first."

"Oh yeah? What are you going to do?" he inquired.

"I'm going to study public policy at Harvard," I replied, perhaps a little too eagerly.

The man lay quietly on the exam table while I applied his gauze dressing. After Dr. Tate left the room to write a prescription for antibiotics, he stood up and offered a prescription of his own.

"Son, do you know what you get when you take a son-of-a-bitch and you educate him?"

"No, sir," I replied.

He smiled, "You get an educated son-of-a-bitch." He shook my hand, and limped out of the exam room.

As I begin interviewing for residency programs, I know the Harvard name often opens doors. However, I cannot forget that it also does not carry the same weight in all circles.

There is a "We-Know-Best" philosophy that is often perceived to come with the Ivy League pedigree. Doctors are especially prone to this kind of paternalism. Of course we know better, with our years of schooling and postgraduate training. Just do as I say and don't ask questions! It is an attitude that is often counterproductive to patient care and never human-centered.

Though I try to be mindful, even as a medical student, I am certainly guilty myself. I must always be conscious of the language I use in and out of the clinic.

Unfortunately, this elitist attitude permeates our classroom language here at Harvard.

After returning from a summer working in several rural clinics in North Carolina, it has been particularly noticeable. The tone of some off-hand comments demonstrated the stark contrast between working in a family medicine practice in Mars Hill, NC and here. In my first full day back at the Kennedy School, it was mentioned that the individuals who get made fools of on The Daily Show and Colbert Report interviews must be from "some podunk town."

Clearly, the urban and educated would never fall for such silly traps.

Later, after reading an op-ed discussing the erosion of American culture, just two weeks after Miley "twerked" it all over the VMAs, a classmate questioned the timeliness of the piece: "Certainly any reasonable person has already forgotten about this by now."

Well, we know best.

Perhaps I am "podunk" and "unreasonable," but I would not last a minute under the Stephen Colbert spotlight, and I am sorry, but I still find the Miley-saga entertaining.

A world-renowned professor in leadership at the Kennedy School tells the following story. There was a small African village where the women had to walk a great distance every morning to get water for their families. Seeing this time-consuming endeavor as an impediment to social and economic progress, an NGO decided to help the women by building a well immediately outside the village. Later, officials from the NGO returned to the village to witness how they had improved the women's lives. To their surprise, they watched the women walk right past the well, traversing the same great distance as before.

The women did not want a well. Their morning pilgrimage was an important part of their social life and culture. No one had actually asked them what they wanted. The volunteers just assumed they knew what was best for them.

So as we start a new school year, let us remember that we do not necessarily know best. We do not know best because we live in the Ivy Tower. We do not know best because we think Miley is old news. We will not know what is best unless we ask.

Let our language reflect our humility. And if we don't, then each of us is just an educated son-of-a-bitch.