Trauma Surgeon

Derived from the Greek term “etumología,” etymology is the study of the original meaning of a word. In defining the term, I have also explained its own etymology. Neat, huh? Every word in the English language can be defined by its etymology. For example, “music” comes from the Greek term “musike,” which means the art of the muses, one of whom was the goddess of music. What you’re really doing is breaking the word down to its pieces, examining each of them individually, then putting them back together to see how they function as a unit.

I do the same thing with objects. When I was five, I wanted to know how a vending machine worked. By figuring out how bills are scanned and how the signal transfers from the computer to the motors, and then stringing the process together, I was able to understand how sticking a dollar into a machine would give me a bag of chips. As I grew older, my focus moved to remote-control models, starting with a plane. To build it from scratch, I had to learn how the primary control surfaces—the ailerons, rudder, and elevator—function, and then how they combine to facilitate flight. A prepared kit would have cost me $300, but I wanted to do it for less. So I ordered most of the parts from companies in China or Singapore. I’d be on the phone with them late at night, working through the language barrier to get what I needed. I built that plane for just around $90. The next project: My dad and I are rebuilding a 1998 Acura Integra with 160,000 miles on it. Our goal is to spend under $5,000 on the rebuild, then drive it from Connecticut to the top of Mount Evans Road in Colorado, the highest drivable peak in the United States at above 14,000 feet. There’s something special about the satisfaction of building something yourself. You obviously get the pride and the bragging rights, and in the case of a car, you get something you can actually use to explore and make new discoveries.

The same process applies to teaching someone something new, like music: Break down old habits and incorrect techniques, develop the individual pieces of the skill, then put them all together. The value of this process became clear to me when I was working on vibrato with one of my cello students. Her idea was to simply twist her hand, which diminished the quality of her sound, and likely would have led to tendonitis. We first had to break the habit of twisting by developing a more curved and centered hand structure, then help her recognize that vibrato requires a microscopic sliding movement on the string. After using a set of shifting exercises, we played around with different speeds and intensities to build an understanding of how they could portray a different effect. I didn’t really teach her anything, though. I just helped her teach herself. That’s how we build independent thinkers who are capable of effecting change.

Whether I’m creating, teaching, innovating, or even just writing, I’m really building—building machines, knowledge, relationships, memories. So you probably think I’m going into construction, or maybe mechanical engineering? Actually, I want to build in a different way—by becoming a trauma surgeon. I’ll still be dissecting and rebuilding; it just won’t be with a plastic model or a cello bow. It will be in the operating theatre, where I might be repairing a ruptured aortic aneurysm by opening the abdomen, replacing the damaged portion with a graft, and closing the cavity. Taking it apart, fixing the pieces, then putting it back together. Same exact thing.