[July 1998 journal entry]
In a recent professional formation meeting with a young physician, we discussed an essay he is writing. I prompted him to consider the following points:
In a recent professional formation meeting with a young physician, we discussed an essay he is writing. I prompted him to consider the following points:
- Speak/write out to but not beyond your ability to explain, defend, and pursue your ideas when open to unrestricted questioning and criticism.
- Editors, publishers, and program planners often push toward broader thinking in order to increase readership/audience.
- Speak/write in a way that retains the liberty to retract later what you have said/written and the liberty to continue as a student of the subject about which you have spoken/written.
- Speak/write in a manner that protects your credibility (as a seeker of truth, insight, reality) when you speak/write again.
- When rigorously self-critical, one’s autobiography is a place where each one can speak/write. Then widen the perspective/subject in a timely manner.
- In an optimal tutorial experience, you can presume (a) the tutor is more often in the lead, (b) the tutor’s perspective is not necessarily the ‘trump’, (c) the tutor is able to acknowledge when s/he gains insight from a student’s essay.