In science, the instinct is often to understand concepts by labeling, explaining, and clarifying. As a pre-med and now, medical student, I am trained to define terms precisely, to separate variables, and reduce complexity. However, that skill does not always apply when science intersects with someone’s values and lived experiences.
I was introduced to this tension during my freshman year at Tufts University in Dr. Garlick’s Civic Science course, “Science and the Human Experience.”
Dr. Garlick’s class brought together about twenty students from a wide range of disciplinary interests and backgrounds. My classmates cared deeply about science, ethics, and social responsibility. However, we approached those topics holding very different perspectives and beliefs. If a topic felt unfamiliar or difficult to reconcile, the classroom became a place for pause and reflection rather than responding right away.
In class, we practiced asking questions in the face of opinions we did not fully agree with or embrace. The questions were simple, but not easy: What led you to think that? What experiences shaped that view? What feels at stake for you here? Learning to ask those questions often required sitting with discomfort and resisting the urge to judge, refute or disagree with in the moment.
Ultimately, Dr. Garlick’s classroom taught me foundational skills I continue to use. I remain close with several classmates and realize that trust grows not just from shared conclusions, but from the care we take with one another’s words.
This same approach carried into my work in the Garlick Stem Cell Lab. There, I helped design, execute, and analyze experiments using three dimensional skin-like tissues that closely model the fibrosis seen in scleroderma. I prepared 3D tissues, performed protein analysis, and trained incoming summer interns in essential laboratory techniques. Each experiment required careful observation of human skin cells and solving unique histology puzzles. The work held personal meaning for me. I lost a beloved aunt to scleroderma, and Dr. Garlick’s research on disease pathogenesis gave me a way to engage with that loss through science.
Our lab regularly participated in disease awareness and fundraising events, which is how I met Jack**, a scleroderma patient who had donated stem cells to our research. While we were walking together at the Deer Island fundraiser, he shared insights about living with a life-threatening illness. Even without a cure on the immediate horizon, contributing to research served as a vessel for hope and a source of emotional grounding for me. Connecting my passion to find new treatments for scleroderma to learning from scleroderma patients was an important civic science moment for me. Through regular meetings with our Dartmouth collaborators, I saw how diverse research teams strengthen scientific work. Different perspectives surfaced new questions and improved our studies. Dr. Garlick’s ability to translate careful bench science into meaningful future patient care left a lasting impression, and he continues to be a mentor to me.
This work taught me that the same habits Dr. Garlick emphasized in Civic Science, including careful listening and respecting lived experience, are not abstract ideals but practical tools that determine whether patients are seen, trusted, and ultimately receive meaningful care.
Additionally, I see how this Civic Science principle that diversity matters for the sake of patient care itself echoed in my work supporting Dr. Alice Bukhman and other volunteer physicians with the Medical Justice Alliance. I help organize and review medical records for patients who are incarcerated ahead of case review clinics. Much of the work happens quietly, through careful reading and thoughtful question-asking. Cases are often shaped by gaps in documentation, system constraints, and competing perspectives. Being useful in this space requires patience, attention to detail, and respect for the clinicians volunteering their time. Trust develops through reliability and care, and it often determines whether meaningful follow-up is possible. This work taught me that the same habits Dr. Garlick emphasized in Civic Science, including careful listening and respecting lived experience, are not abstract ideals but practical tools that determine whether patients are seen, trusted, and ultimately receive meaningful care.
Now, in my first year as a medical student, I once again turn to the lessons I learned in Dr. Garlick’s class and lab. Both in the clinic and medical school classroom, I am reminded that listening and understanding are as important as speaking accurately. Asking thoughtful questions helps create room for honesty, especially when fear, uncertainty, or difference arise in the patients I seek to care for.
Dr. Garlick’s class gave me an early framework for this work. It taught me that civic science is not only about public engagement. It is about how we relate to one another, especially when perspectives differ, and how curiosity can become a way of caring.
**Jack is a pseudonym to protect the privacy of the patient.**
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Julia Zweifach is a first-year medical student at the Frank H. Netter MD School of Medicine. She earned her degree in International Relations from Tufts University (with a focus on global health). Prior to medical school, she worked as a clinical research coordinator in the pediatric cystic fibrosis clinic at Massachusetts General Hospital and conducted advocacy work with the Medical Justice Alliance, experiences that shaped her commitment to patient-centered and justice-oriented care. Outside of medicine, she is a lifelong dancer, a lover of the outdoors, and a cartoonist.
