Gap year, this week
September 17, 2024
We have been off the grid for a few days. With luck we have dropped into Port Angeles to check all of our inane text messages and the latest assassination attempts. … More Gap year, this week
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Gap Year, week twenty something
July 14, 2024
Technically, still week 28, by a day. The 12-month gap, to bring any newcomers up to speed, spans from January 2024, when I was employed as a clinical geneticist, to January 2025 when I hope to be a writer, thought not yet daring to be employed. This blog is my opinionated memoir of the descent … More Gap Year, week twenty something
Gap Year: Week 24
June 17, 2024
Very close to the summer solstice and half way through my one-year voyage between a full-time clinical genetics practice and something to do with writing. These Gap Year posts are my secret diary (OK, not secret secret). Writers seem to be in their meeting season, though that may well be a year-long pastime. Recently I … More Gap Year: Week 24
Gap Year, Week XXI
May 28, 2024
Memorial Day is in the rearview mirror, and the summer of my Gap Year is officially here. This is shaping up to be the most important phase of the journey as I begin to seriously work on applications to low-residency MFA programs in creative writing. My heart and mind, though, remain anchored in clinical genetics. … More Gap Year, Week XXI
Gap Year – Week 15
April 16, 2024
This week the journey from medicine to writing has been full of adventure. My new friend, Monika Maeckle, whose book, The Monarch Butterfly Migration, will be published in August, strongly encouraged me to attend the San Antonio Book Festival, which I did last weekend. That really got me depressed. There were just too many great … More Gap Year – Week 15
Gap Year, week twelve
March 25, 2024
My gap-year transit continues across space and time, looping from the nebulae of clinical medicine to the dense gravities of a writing world and back again, rife with principles of uncertainty. Yesterday I learned that some of our work on holoprosencephaly will soon be published in Genetics in Medicine. Huzzah! I’m not sure what can … More Gap Year, week twelve
Gap Year | Week 9
March 4, 2024
Truth is stranger than fiction. You can see here a beard (me) in a hooded sweatshirt. What is probably true is that it is my Hamilton College lacrosse sweatshirt, last worn in 1979, then saved in several generations of cardboard boxes and moved from Clinton to Baltimore to Boston to Bethesda, Tacoma, Seoul, Vienna (VA), … More Gap Year | Week 9
Why I do not kneel
September 30, 2017
I salute the American flag when the Star Spangled Banner is played. I stand at attention, left hand ramrod straight at my sides, fingers curled, thumb pointing straight at the center of the earth. Shoulders squared, gut sucked in … as much as possible, which could be flatter, but I’m working on it. Right arm … More Why I do not kneel
Scott D. McLean, MD 