Magazine Editor:

Karl Williams

Deputy Editors:

Nabeel Chollampat 

Lara Moehlman

Design Editor:

Shane Achenbach

Photo Editor:

Zoey Holmstrom

Creative Director:

Emilie Farrugia

Editor in Chief:

Shoham Geva

Managing Editor:

Laura Schinagle

Copy Editors:

Emily Campbell

Alexis Nowicki

Taylor Grandinetti

the statement

2B
Wednesday, October 26, 2016 / The Statement

There’s something scary about the 

pronoun “I.” When we’re first taught to 
write essays, we’re told to avoid this word 
like the plague. “I” is by turns informal 
and inappropriate, both unworthy of the 
form and too intimate in its implications.

But what’s so wrong about the intimate? 

Is it so dangerous to reveal oneself to the 
reader? Why the hesitancy?

Within these pages, you’ll find seven 

personal essays from staffers throughout 
The Michigan Daily. These range from the 
comical to the revealing to the genuinely 
optimistic — but they are all honest.

In these stories, you’ll find genuine pain, 

happiness and insecurity. Our writers 
will take you on their summer travels 
and to the memory of an impromptu 
comedy-show gone awry. But wherever 
these writers take you, they’ll all bring 
you back to what they’re really trying to 
understand: themselves.

letter from the editors

Magazine Editor, Karl Williams

Deputy Editor, Lara Moehlman

Design Editor, Shane Achenbach

Creative Director, Emilie Farrugia

Photo Editor, Zoey Holmstrom

Deputy Editor, Nabeel Chollampat

Lessons From the Morgue

B Y M AYA S H A N K A R , D A I LY S TA F F R E P O R T E R
“

You can come closer,” the pathologist said, gesturing 
with his head to the dead body lying on the table in front 
of me while he gripped the bone-saw tightly.

I was in an autopsy, one of the many procedures I signed up 

to shadow in hopes of gaining a better understanding of the 
medical field. I’ve always been determined to be a doctor, an 
aspiration that stems from my desire to make a difference. In 
my 10th grade American Literature class we read a poem, “The 
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in which T.S. Eliot writes of 
a protagonist who wonders if he should dare to “disturb the 
universe.” I love this phrase; I think it’s such a beautiful way 
to say “change the world.” For a long time, I thought that to dis-
turb the universe — to transform the world — we would have to 
somehow initiate a great change: eradicate a disease or create 
the next sustainable source of energy. I believed that it was only 
after I became a doctor that I would have my opportunity to 
disturb the universe.

We, as pre-med students, are told to shadow many different 

health care professionals. This makes sense: It exposes us to 
the industry and allows us to make educated decisions about 
the careers we plan to pursue. So, the Spring break of my soph-
omore year of college was spent shadowing as many doctors as 
I could. That was how I found myself in the morgue of a hospi-
tal at 7 a.m. on a cold March morning, being told to step closer 
to the body.

Autopsies are incredibly methodical procedures. The pathol-

ogist starts by examining the patient, cataloguing tattoos and 
scars, before extracting samples of bodily fluid to be tested in 
the lab. The first part of the body to be opened — at least in the 
autopsies I shadowed — is the chest. The doctor observes the 
chest cavity, noting down the position and state of the organs 
inside, before taking out the heart and a lung. He measures and 
weighs the organs before slicing a piece from each and placing 
the rest back into the body. A pathologist never takes a whole 
organ from the patient if they can help it because many people 
believe that they need all their organs to transition to the after-
life. After the chest, he moves on to the pelvic area and then the 
head, carefully measuring, categorizing, cutting and replacing 
all the organs as he moves through the body.

As I stood there, watching this doctor cut into someone else’s 

body, I was reminded of how easy it is to die.

At 20 years old, I sometimes forget that we, as human beings, 

are not invincible. We’re college students; staying up until 5 
a.m. studying, and then waking up in time for our 8 a.m. lec-
tures. We survive on meals of mac and cheese and frozen 
waffles. We walk for 20 minutes in blizzard conditions to get 
to that one class that we can’t miss, lest we lose out on those 
precious attendance points. We spend nights in beds that aren’t 
ours and indulge in drinks we probably shouldn’t drink. We do 
things that might not be good for us but we survive it all. We 
even thrive. It’s easy to take that for granted sometimes, that 
feeling that no matter what we do we’ll be OK.

It was jarring to see proof of the fragility of life laying right 

in front of me.

That morning, witnessing an autopsy, I was struck by both 

the vulnerability and strength of human beings. I was able to 
hold a human heart that had been beating just a few hours ear-
lier. The brain that created the personality and held the memo-
ries of a real person was resting in my hands. It was humbling 
to be able to touch the parts of a person that made them who 
they were, and it was inspiring to see the strength and respect 
with which the doctor performed the procedure. He was an 
artist, cutting and sewing in exact lines. He was a detective, 
studying the clues within his patients. He was a reader, learn-
ing the stories their bodies told even after they were gone.

In the basement of that hospital, standing in a cold, window-

less room where the dead far outnumbered the living, I discov-
ered what it really meant to disturb the universe. Changing the 
world doesn’t require a grand gesture. The patients who were 
lying in front of me had changed the world. Their hearts had 
once beat, their minds had once thought and, even after they 
were gone, their bodies were communicating their stories to 
us. They had lived, and, in doing so, regardless of how small 
of an effect it may have been, they had made their mark; they 
changed their world simply by existing in it. So sitting here, in 
this warm library with lots of windows surrounded by other 
students who are breathing and thinking and feeling, I am 
reminded of the lesson I learned in the morgue — that we are 
alive and we are disturbing the universe.

