On Curiosity:
Like all kids, I was very curious when growing up. This child-like curiosity was brought back out of me when I moved to San Francisco for dance. The artistic director/choreographer, Alonzo King, was a philosopher and an artist in every sense of the word, and a scientist in the way that he perceived the world. He encouraged us to take the movement (choreography) and play with it; be curious about it. Where is it coming from? Where can it go? He constantly encouraged us to interact with our environment through dance as a means of discovery. One of the things that made me nervous about leaving the dance world and coming into the profession of science and medicine was, am I going to lose all of that play, that sense of wonder about the world? But medicine is cool! There are a lot of unanswered questions left to be curious about. If you really engage in your learning about the physiology and the pathophysiology and allow yourself to enjoy the experience of learning, it is not so dissimilar to the artistic process! So, I feel like if anything, my dance background has actually helped me as a medical student.
balance our medical knowledge and technical skills with our humanity and intuition. Our patients will communicate with us not only through words, but also with pauses, body language, and energy. We have to be astute enough to pick up on this because sometimes that’s where the story is. What many of our instructors tell us is, if we listen well enough to our patients, they will reveal to us what’s wrong or what the diagnosis is through their words and behaviors.
On the Art of Listening:
Alonzo King (artistic director) and his faculty would encourage us to seek an internal balance between the artist and the scientist. So, we’re not just technicians, even though that’s how we’re trained in ballet, to do all of these perfect steps. We also have to be expressive artists. But if we let the artist entirely take over, then there is just this mess of emotion that the audience can’t make any sense of. So, you have to be able to execute your technique clearly, but with a sense of abandon. This is really what I think they’re trying to teach us in our Osteopathic Clinical Skills classes – we need to
Interview with Jenna Wozer, COM '21:
Staying Fluid Within the Current of Medicine
"I feel like if anything, my dance background has actually helped me as a medical student."