Their opening exchange:
Read the entire interview.Erika Dreifus (ED): Fairly early in your memoir, you tell us that "journalism had always been a passion" of yours. You mention that you spent the summer before starting medical school on a science journalism fellowship sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. You also mention an internship you undertook -- while you were a full-time medical student -- with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Please tell us a little about your training and development as a writer--how these (and any other) experiences proved formative.
Sandeep Jauhar (SJ): In high school I always enjoyed writing. But like most budding writers, I didn't know how to parlay my interest into a career. When I went to Berkeley in 1985, I made a deliberate choice to focus on science and math. My writing interest lay dormant for many years until I came across a brochure advertising the AAAS Mass Media Science and Engineering Fellows Program. I applied and, much to my amazement, got the fellowship. I spent the summer of 1995 at the Washington, DC, bureau of Time magazine.
That experience convinced me that journalism and writing had to be a part of my career if I was going to feel fulfilled. Heeding the advice of journalism mentors, I landed a reporting internship at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch during my second year in medical school. The internship taught me how to write 500-word news stories on deadline. These pieces and some longer feature articles became the portfolio I presented to The New York Times. Cornelia Dean, the science editor, gave me my first big break in 1998 by accepting a query for a 1200-word piece about the closing of a leprosy hospital in Louisiana. I eventually started writing essays about internship and residency for the science section of The Times. (My first essay required 3 or 4 complete rewrites! I remember Cornelia advising me to stop being "writerly" and just tell the story.) After a couple of years I moved on to 3000-word pieces for the Sunday Times Magazine.
The Page 69 Test: Intern: A Doctor's Initiation.
--Marshal Zeringue