On staying a beginner

Being a physician-researcher means being a beginner in two places at once, more or less indefinitely.

In the clinic, I know enough to be useful and not enough to stop learning. In the lab, the same. The overlap between the two (the territory where I’m supposed to have something to contribute) is a narrow strip that I’m still figuring out the shape of.

This used to feel like a problem. It now feels like the point.

There’s a particular kind of confidence that comes from depth in a single domain. The specialist who has seen ten thousand of the same case, whose pattern recognition is so automatic it looks like intuition. I admire this. I’m also not sure it’s what my work requires.

The research questions that interest me most are the ones that don’t live cleanly inside any one discipline. How do interfaces shape clinical reasoning? What does it mean to design for expertise rather than against it? These questions need someone who can sit with the discomfort of not fully belonging anywhere.

The beginner’s position is uncomfortable but epistemically useful. You notice things that experts have learned to stop seeing. You ask questions that get written off as naive but sometimes turn out to be important. You’re forced to explain your assumptions because you can’t take shared vocabulary for granted.

The danger is staying a beginner forever because it’s easier than committing to a position.

At some point you have to plant a flag. Say: I think this is how it works. Here’s my evidence. I’m willing to be wrong about this in front of people.

The beginner’s mind is valuable. The beginner’s reluctance to be accountable for a claim is just avoidance.

I’m working on the difference.