Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2015 - (Page 44)

creative minds imagine Essay Contest Thank you to all who entered our Creative Minds Essay Contest! We are thrilled to announce the winners here. Please visit our website at http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/contestresults.html to read all winning essays as well as the judge's comments on them. Our Creative Minds Fiction Contest is now open through March 13, 2015. Read submission guidelines and enter online at www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/creativeminds.html. FIRST PLACE Odor of Sanctity by Kain Kim When my dentist, whom I had been shadowing for the entirety of the past summer, asked what I thought after he finished cementing a crown onto a patient's weak tooth, I had only one thing to say: "Spiritual." I'm no pious fanatic in any sense, far from it. But there was something transcendent, sacerdotally divine, about the purifying halo of clean white light that arched over us all and illuminated the patient's gaping mouth. The incomprehensible uttering of half-answers to questions like "are you in pain?" were spoken around gleaming sterile intrusions, in tongues like at a Pentecostal church. I don't think many people realize this, but there's something awfully intimate about having someone put their hands, shrink-wrapped in latex, into your mouth. I think it requires an inordinate amount of trust. You'll never get anywhere like that, my dentist had told me. He had then leaned back in his swiveling vinyl chair that was a sterile, sickly pale green like everything else around us in the clinic, and in that infuriatingly phlegmatic way adults quite so often act had said, Tell me, why do you want to be a dentist? I'd been shadowing this man for nearly three months as an unofficial technical assistant, and there was nothing at all technical about it. I'd pull up with my mom in our clanking artifact of a station wagon, fight out our constitutional parking rights with the local patrolling police officer, and then go inside so I could hand Dr. So-and-So his retractors and probes and halogen light bulbs and whirring handpieces in the sanctimonious cubicle of trust. I called it that because everyone inside it needs to have complete faith in each other. The patient trusts the dentist to put multifarious demonic-looking devices in his mouth. I trust the patient to not sue us for misalignment or breaching of regulatory policies. Dr. So-and-So trusts me to not to hand him the wrong instruments. An ongoing cycle. 44 imagine It was my last day at the clinic. My friends compulsively ewwed at the idea of looking into mouths all day. So what? It was no worse than going into people's bowels or looking at their feet. Every part of the human body is equally as disgusting-or not disgusting, depending on how you want to look at it-as the next. I liked the look of the sterile chrome instruments, small and pointy with an indiscernibly nefarious aura, had always been fascinated by the way each one had its own function and place in the operating room-one to pick at your cavities, the other to suck up all your spit so you wouldn't choke on it while being operated on-had never been frightened of them as a child as many others tended to be. Fixing a tooth was like building a house. You mixed such-and-such powder with such-and-such liquid to formulate an adhesive; you applied it to the tooth, held over it a halogen light that would bathe the patient in indigo glow and almost instantly harden the light-activated glue. When the leather-backed chair tilted the patient back up with its slow, contented hum of a job well done, one felt purged, ready for a new life. I sat there in my dentist's office, his hard eyes reflecting the cold steel of his instruments. With the overhead lamp still suffusing us in its clinical light, I felt as if I were attending a confessional, ready for catharsis. The sanctimonious cubicle of trust, indeed. Why did I want to become a dentist? The air hissed with expectation-of all I would amount to, and what I would do with it. It briefly impressed upon me that my mentor, as it was, had already given up on me; I was a lost case, just another run-of-themill teenager with no special aspirations or any tangible goals. His glassy eyes subtly shone with the satisfaction of another person sorted, de facto classified in the blink of an eye, a patient suc- Jan/Feb 2015 http://cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/contest/contestresults.html http://www.cty.jhu.edu/imagine/guidelines/creativeminds.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2015

Big Picture
In My Own Words
Land & Sea
Going Full Circle with Ocean Conservation
At Home in the Water
Diving into Marine Science
Ocean Views
Becoming a Steward of the Seas
Engineering for Ocean Health
Selected Opportunities and Resources
The Wonderful World of MOOCs
Super
Off the Shelf
Word Wise
Exploring Career Options
One Step Ahead
Planning Ahead for College
Students Review: UC San Diego
Creative Minds Imagine
Mark Your Calendar
Knossos Games

Imagine Magazine - Johns Hopkins - January/February 2015

https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20160506_LTB
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20160304_CTW
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20160102_JHB
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20151112_DSS
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20150910_RUR
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20150506_WSH
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20150304_TGB
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20150102_IDS
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20141112_ASE
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20140910_PBD
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20140506_BDA
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20140304_SHD
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20140102_JUS
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20131112_MX5
https://www.nxtbook.com/mercury/imagine/20120910_CTD
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20130910_AFN
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20130506_PLQ
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20130304_TRB
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20130102_GME
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20121112_LRH
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20120910_YBS
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20120506_B2H
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20120304_P3A
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20120102_FMS
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20111112_TAML
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110910_ATSP
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110506_DMI
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110304_MIV
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20110102_JFH
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20101112IMJHND
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20100910QTVS1
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20100506_INH
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20100304_SFF
https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/imagine/20090102_v2
https://www.nxtbookmedia.com