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Authors: M.D. Mark Vonnegut
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warrants, drug and alcohol problems, dating and employment problems, and other “issues.” At least now number one son was married and had a fixed-up Victorian house where everyone could have Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. What chip on what shoulder? Maybe a man with a compass, a machete, and a strong right arm could lead his people out of the wilderness. If I, as a sick person, had been dragging a dozen or more people down, maybe as a healthy one I could lift up that many or more.
I saw myself as somewhat of a placement problem, and getting into medical school was a huge help. Later, when I was interviewing applicants to HMS and they all had such high aspirations, I wondered if less might not be more. Maybe one of them might say, “I’m just looking for an interesting way to hang out and stay out of trouble.” Something like that.
A child ready to learn how to read represents an enormous amount of luck, work, time, and patience. Imagine the astounding luck and work involved in making a medical school applicant. Doctors are like baby oysters on a very deep reef of forefathers and mothers and aunts and uncles hundreds of feet deep with a million important details buried beyond recall. What I asked myself about applicants was whether talking to them made me more or less lonely.
Zachary, my first son, was born when I was two years into medical school. First son had first son so there could be an orderly succession, like the House of Windsor.
Having a famous parent is a leg up to nowhere. It made sense to people that Kurt Vonnegut’s son would have mental health problems. It made sense that I would not do well.
“You’re Kurt Vonnegut’s son? I heard that you had hung yourself in a barn in New Jersey.”
“No. Actually I’m in med school.”
My mother glossed over the chaos we had come from. “You all turned out so well.”
To me it looked like one close call after another and like the woman had been just plain lucky. She could just as easily have a child or two in prison or not getting better from their various disorders and maybe having me hang myself in New Jersey rather than go to medical school.
In general people don’t wish the children of famous people well. It’s somehow fitting or instructive that we screw up or come to tragic ends. It helped me a lot that I didn’t grow up the son of a famous man. It was like watching from afar when the money hit. I’ll always remember my father as the world’s worst car salesman who couldn’t get a job teaching English at Cape Cod Community College.
At Harvard, the courses were pass-fail, but I wanted to get as much right on the tests as possible. I wanted there to be a margin of safety. There were a few of us who would race to see who could finish the tests first. I won more than once. Doing well seemed well within my power.
I loved that
we
had accumulated and organized so much information. I was standing on the shoulders of giants and was possibly the flower of Western civilization. Self-will was running riot, but it was for a really good cause.
Sooner or later in medical school you end up across the table from a senior surgeon with a pair of scissors in your hand. The surgeon ties and holds the suture and says, “Cut.”
You cut. He says, “Too long.”
You cut the next one a little shorter.
“Too short,” he says.
And so forth.
After thirty or forty cuts that are all too long or too short, you ask him if he wants the next one too long or too short, and that’s how you pass the test.
I practiced surgical knots until I could do them in the dark. Learning anatomy, microbiology, pathology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, et cetera, was like being on vacation. It was interesting in its own right and I was in love with being able to do it. The questions on the tests had right answers, and because I had read what I was supposed to read and studied what I was supposed to have studied, I knew what they were.
My publisher gave me a copy of Scott
I saw myself as somewhat of a placement problem, and getting into medical school was a huge help. Later, when I was interviewing applicants to HMS and they all had such high aspirations, I wondered if less might not be more. Maybe one of them might say, “I’m just looking for an interesting way to hang out and stay out of trouble.” Something like that.
A child ready to learn how to read represents an enormous amount of luck, work, time, and patience. Imagine the astounding luck and work involved in making a medical school applicant. Doctors are like baby oysters on a very deep reef of forefathers and mothers and aunts and uncles hundreds of feet deep with a million important details buried beyond recall. What I asked myself about applicants was whether talking to them made me more or less lonely.
Zachary, my first son, was born when I was two years into medical school. First son had first son so there could be an orderly succession, like the House of Windsor.
Having a famous parent is a leg up to nowhere. It made sense to people that Kurt Vonnegut’s son would have mental health problems. It made sense that I would not do well.
“You’re Kurt Vonnegut’s son? I heard that you had hung yourself in a barn in New Jersey.”
“No. Actually I’m in med school.”
My mother glossed over the chaos we had come from. “You all turned out so well.”
To me it looked like one close call after another and like the woman had been just plain lucky. She could just as easily have a child or two in prison or not getting better from their various disorders and maybe having me hang myself in New Jersey rather than go to medical school.
In general people don’t wish the children of famous people well. It’s somehow fitting or instructive that we screw up or come to tragic ends. It helped me a lot that I didn’t grow up the son of a famous man. It was like watching from afar when the money hit. I’ll always remember my father as the world’s worst car salesman who couldn’t get a job teaching English at Cape Cod Community College.
At Harvard, the courses were pass-fail, but I wanted to get as much right on the tests as possible. I wanted there to be a margin of safety. There were a few of us who would race to see who could finish the tests first. I won more than once. Doing well seemed well within my power.
I loved that
we
had accumulated and organized so much information. I was standing on the shoulders of giants and was possibly the flower of Western civilization. Self-will was running riot, but it was for a really good cause.
Sooner or later in medical school you end up across the table from a senior surgeon with a pair of scissors in your hand. The surgeon ties and holds the suture and says, “Cut.”
You cut. He says, “Too long.”
You cut the next one a little shorter.
“Too short,” he says.
And so forth.
After thirty or forty cuts that are all too long or too short, you ask him if he wants the next one too long or too short, and that’s how you pass the test.
I practiced surgical knots until I could do them in the dark. Learning anatomy, microbiology, pathology, pathophysiology, pharmacology, et cetera, was like being on vacation. It was interesting in its own right and I was in love with being able to do it. The questions on the tests had right answers, and because I had read what I was supposed to read and studied what I was supposed to have studied, I knew what they were.
My publisher gave me a copy of Scott
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