I took a sharp turn at the end of the hallway, slowly approaching the familiar operating theatre. I could feel my heart pounding, the blood rushing to my skull with every beat. A year of experience, and my nerves would still get to me. As I approached my destination, I felt an undying fear, anxiety disrupting all my thoughts. I could never be certain of the future, and it seemed with every passing operation, I became more anxious of that unthinkable result. A failure. A patient left crippled or lifeless because of my incompetence. Everything relied on my ability to work quickly and accurately, and perform successfully.

Nearing the operating theatre, I passed a middle-aged lady holding the hand of a young girl. They seemed anxious like me, and were pacing up and down the hallway. I sensed a familiar uncertainty in the lady, and confusion in the child. Whatever the woman was going through, the girl was too young and naïve to understand. Their fear resonated through me, empathy making me hope that whatever it was they were concerned for turns out positively for them. They looked at me, with hope shining in their eyes. I wondered why.

I entered the operating theatre and nervously put on my gloves and mask. The room was cold, empty and white. It smelled of sterilizing alcohol, and was silent except for the constant beeping of the heartrate monitor. A slow, repetitive beep. I was the only surgeon there, and the surgical nurses were waiting for me. Their eyes glared through me and could sense the irritation in the facial expressions hidden by their masks. It was then when I first saw the patient lying in the centre of the room. He was already unconscious, and the anaesthetist was standing patiently in the corner. The patient was completely still, his only sign of life the nearby heartrate monitor. Its repeated beep resonated through my mind. This patient had placed his complete trust in my ability to cure him of his illness. His life was entirely in my hands.

I approached the table with the unconscious man. The nurses were ready. The equipment prepared. I was the final step. I hovered over the comatose body ready to perform my surgery. I was about to begin. Then I froze. What was I supposed to do? I knew this. I learnt it. And at that moment, it had all left me. An uneasy silence fell in the room, the beeping of the heartbeat monitor pounding through my head. I was lost. I felt as if I was hovering in an empty limbo, and time had halted around me. My hands began to shake. I felt the dampness of my breath under my mask, and the cold sweat sticking to my hands under my gloves. I thought about all my studying and training, yet I could not muster up the energy to move. Then I heard a nurse speak.

“Did you see the patient’s wife and child outside? They were so worried, they couldn’t even sit still!”

The lady outside. The girl with her. They were this man’s family. They were so scared when I saw them pacing around outside. They were waiting for me. I was going to save this man, their husband and father. I realised why I had chosen to become a surgeon. I didn’t have to put myself in a situation where a person’s life was in my hands; it was a choice. I wanted to cure people and help them. I couldn’t give up, with that man lying motionless on the table and his wife and daughter waiting outside, worried for his life. Immediately, I grabbed a scalpel from the nurse. The cold, hard metal felt familiar. It was a comforting feeling. Suddenly I knew exactly what to do. My hands began to work, performing an art with precision and poise. I formed an incision. Removed what needed to be removed. Sutured the wound. All my experience returned to me in an instant as I realised what was at stake. It was an artwork, one that took years of studying and practice to complete. But it was worth the effort to help another person.

I cleaned up and walked out the door with relief flowing through me. The mother and daughter were still waiting outside, holding hands. They looked at me, and I nodded with a smile. They immediately reciprocated with joyful, teary smiles. That was why I chose to do what I do.

 

It was also important for my overall understanding of the relationship between reading and writing. The introduction allowed me to realise that the quantity and style of books I read will directly affect my ability to write, and my writing style as a whole. While my personal writing style is unique, as are all writing styles, it is heavily influenced by the types of texts that I read. One example is the book I have chosen to read at school, Mistborn: The Final Empire. This is a fantasy text written in the third person. My text is not a fantasy, and it is written in the first person, but the book contains a great amount of description and usage of imagery. In this case reading the book allowed me to improve my descriptive skills which aided me in writing my imaginative text.

One aspect of reading to write which we explored was discussing texts to observe specific details about the way they are written. It was a more direct approach to the concept of reading to write. Generally, I would read texts and subconsciously notice and remember details of how they were written and then implement those details into my writing without noticing. A particular lesson we partook in in week 4, which is discussed in my Learning Journal, had us read the starts of different books and try to directly apply the writing styles and write our own story starters. This taught me that when reading texts, we can adopt writing styles and ideas to apply in our own writing. 

Another idea we discussed was building a story around a creative piece we were provided with and creating a character, setting and plot based off of the creative piece. We had a practical lesson in week 5, discussed in my Learning Journal, where we were provided with a creative piece as stimulus and instructed to build a story around it. This lesson taught me about how a small stimulus can be used to inspire an entire creative piece by building around the foundations of the stimulus and creating ideas and a story based off of it. This was particularly important in the construction of my creative text. I am not a very creative person. I struggle to think of completely new ideas when writing creative pieces and as such I had no ideas for my creative text, and I was stuck. This was when I came across a book titled Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs: The Making of a Surgeon. This book is an autobiography of a man named Dr. Michael Collins who spent most of his youth working in construction, and then decided that he wanted to do something that mattered more with his life and went to medical school. The book was comical and enjoyable throughout but also gave insight into the life of a surgeon which allowed me to make my creative text more realistic.

One lesson I learnt about reading to write was that while reading does inspire better writing, the reading aspect did not necessarily have to be a book. It could be any form of educational text from which we can derive lessons from to influence our writing. A specific example of this was a podcast we listened to in week 3, discussed in my Learning Journal, that involved famous authors discussing the skills they utilise to write exceptional prose. This lesson was beneficial as rather than reading a text and taking lessons from it, we were able to listen directly to the authors of quality texts and take advice on writing from them. I also took another lesson from this class. I learnt that there are a wide range of mediums from which we can learn, rather than from only reading books. The idea of developing my writing skills from a podcast was not something I had thought about prior to that lesson.

This inspired me, and I immediately invested myself in a podcast series called The Mohamed Ghilan Podcast. This ongoing series is developed by a man named Dr. Mohamed Ghilan who has earned a doctorate in neuroscience and devoted much of his life to studying the religion of Islam. In his podcast, he takes a holistic approach to teaching about Islam by integrating lessons of neuroscience, human nature and morals and ethics. He is very well spoken, and just by listening to him speak I have learnt and adapted skills in writing clearly and in an understandable and concise way. However, the lessons I took the most from the podcasts were on human nature, morals and ethics. These lessons were important to my creative text as they allowed me to integrate values into my text through the morals and ethics of my main character.

Possibly the lesson I learnt this term that resonated in me the most was ‘writing about things you understand’. This might seem insignificant but it played a large part in the construction of my creative text. There was a particular lesson in week 7, discussed in my Learning Journal, where we had to write a monologue in groups that would be read out by other members of the class. The monologue my group wrote was in a female voice, and even with lots of effort we did not fully succeed in capturing a female voice. This was simply because we are not female, and therefore have not experienced and do not properly understand how a female might think or speak. This put my past writing experiences into perspective, as whenever I had written about something I understood my writing was often much better than when I wrote about something I had never experienced personally, such as a fantasy or dystopian story, or in the case of that lesson, being a woman.

This relates to reading to write in the sense that when we read, we are learning about the topic of the text and gaining a proper understanding of it and to write about something you have experienced or read about would be very difficult and not end up with a quality final product. This inspired how I wrote my creative piece. There were two main aspects of my piece: the story itself, and the emotions and characterisation of my main character. In terms of the story, I was able to learn about medical practice from the books I read, and also from listening to the people around me such as my sister, who is a practicing doctor. When it came to emotion and characterisation, I chose to implement the character I understood best: myself. I incorporated certain aspects of my own personality into my character, Doctor Josh, to give him depth of character and make him more believable as a character. This lesson in reading to write allowed me to develop my main character properly, which was important as he was the only character I went in depth describing.