one-time meetings

Being a quiet person and someone that doesn't usually register on anyone's radar on first meeting, I believe in the need for time and multiple interactions to get any significant sense of someone. It goes without saying that you usually need more than a first impression to get to know someone, but I think that it's hard to base even small things on a first interaction, depending on circumstances. M thinks you can get more from this than I give credit, and I think it's true that I should give more credence to these things, even as staying open to what else might inform your perception and understanding of someone.

Two interactions today made me think of this even more. The first was meeting with the person who will be writing a letter for my residency application. Residencies require a letter from the chair of your department, and if you aren't so naturally inclined to networking like me, you might not have met this person before you need a letter from them. So they set up a meeting to speak with this person, so that they might get to know you enough to write a letter about you. The person reads your CV, personal statement, has a conversation with you, and writes the letter that same day. Going into this, it felt like a routine part of the process, something to elicit skepticism but something needed to be done. Afterwards, I was surprised at how much was exchanged and received, and how glad I was that this person would be writing about me. I don't know if he has always had this ability or has cultivated it over a lot of people interaction, but at the end of the forty minute meeting, he had picked up on different themes important to me and connected them in the same way I perceive and feel them. I was glad on the one hand that some of my thoughts had been conveyed in my personal statement, which at the time of writing felt a little distant. On the other hand I felt that a lot of this understanding came from him--what he noticed, what he listened to, what he asked. It was a pleasant surprise to feel that an important part of me had been shared, and it is something to aspire emulating.

The other was an interview with a patient, for my research on terminally ill patients. It was the first time I'd met anyone with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (AML, or Lou Gehrig's disease). This disease affects a person's muscles, such that there is progressive decline in the use of your arms, legs, throat, and lungs. Most people die from respiratory failure several years after diagnosis, after losing the ability to walk, eat, talk, and finally breathe. Knowing rationally how devastating this must be, I was a little unsure what to expect. In the hour of speaking with him and his wife, an incredible couple, they shared a part of their story not yet voiced to anyone else. He had never talked about dying before, and as he did, a lot seemed to pass between us--not just the sadness, but also the lighter moments, had weight. As hard as it was, I felt pretty lucky to receive so much from meeting a stranger. I suppose this is the nature of all interviews, when you expect to get some sense of someone from an interaction structured to do so, but always having been skeptical of this notion, I was surprised.

Maybe I wouldn't have trusted the second interaction in the same way if I hadn't had the first one; after all, who can say what we observe is true or what bulk it comprises. But so it often goes, that each meeting is isolated and connected.