On a frigid Chicago winter day in 2015, I gathered with a group of 12 second-year medical students around the Georges Seurat painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” which is prominently displayed in one of the main exhibition halls at the Art Institute of Chicago. I was attending a humanities course offered through my medical school titled The Seeing Eye, which aimed to teach young doctors mindfulness and observational skills through art appreciation. On those precious afternoons away from preclinical studies, I eagerly exchanged my stethoscope for a magnifying glass and wandered the museum with my friends, studying stroke patterns, colors, shades, and hues that leapt from famous paintings and statues. It was a wonderful time, and certainly one of my most memorable, if not most formative, experiences during medical school.
Five years later, as a CA-2 at Stanford, I decided to enter the California...
