• This is a Text investigation. Consider your essential question in the context of at least two outside sources you have identified that connect to your essential question. How do these ideas resonate with or challenge your own beliefs, experiences, or practices? Be sure to give concrete and specific examples. You may want to address: ways the sources answered parts of your Essential Question, what additional questions were raised, or how your essential understanding of your project was altered or confirmed by the readings you did.

At five weeks into Senior Project, I’ve found myself constantly changing perspectives through every new source I meet/discover. However, before even starting the project, being able to change narratives/perspectives was the main thing I wanted to leave knowing I was able to do. 

My most recent interview was with a good family friend of mine, Dr. Mark Price. After receiving his MD from Harvard Medical School and Ph.D. in Medical Physics from MIT, Dr. Mark became one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country. Dr. Mark is currently the Head Team Physician and Medical Director for the New England Patriots.

Prior to his current job with the New England Patriots, Dr. Mark was the Head Physician for the Boston Red Sox. During the Red Sox spring training, Dr. Mark gets told he will be going to Afghanistan as an orthopedic surgeon. 

Dr. Mark has always been like a second father to me, so I felt comfortable asking questions that came straight off the top of my head and ones that I had the genuine curiosity to know the answers to. Towards the end of our interview, I asked him if there were any stories —that he hadn’t told me before— that still keeps him up at night? Or a story that he finds himself constantly thinking back to? And to my surprise, there was one I hadn’t heard yet. 

Dr. Mark told me about this one particular time relatively close to when he had just arrived in Afghanistan. One day he was in his tent and in walks a little kid and his father. The little kid had had thumb duplications. In it itself, it’s not a big deal. Yet in their culture, it’s something that was shamed because cosmetically it looked weird. The father explained to Dr. Mark that because of his problem, it would make his little boy less able to marry someone and have a family one day. 

Sadly, Dr. Mark had to tell his father that the boy was too small to get the surgery. But knowing that he would be there for almost a year, Dr. Mark tells the boy and his father,  ‘just come back in 7 months once he gets some meat on his bones, bring him back then.” 

So the boy comes back in 7 months with chubby cheeks and Dr. Mark agrees to do the surgery. 

The surgery ends up going very very well and the father couldn’t have been more grateful for what Dr. Mark did. 

Once the little boy and his father come back to Mark for a ‘post op’ visit, Dr. Mark tells me, “the father gave me the most beautiful hand sewed scarf and said, ‘my son is too young to know, but I will always make sure that he knows what the Americans did for him.’” 

I found Dr. Mark so fascinating because something I’d never really thought much of before senior project was how many parts it actually takes to make the United States Navy. A navy isn’t just made up of navy marines and officers but there are so so many units within it. Dr. Mark was a surgeon for the army. Yes he did carry a gun and yes he wore a combat uniform, but when Dr. Mark told me this one particular story, it made me feel genuine emotion. I felt sad for the boy and his father and I felt so happy for Dr. Mark and how many lives he must have saved living there. But reading about the Afghanistan war through news headlines/stories I don’t think I would’ve gotten to feel that same emotion as I did speaking with Dr. Mark. 

And it was only after that interview where I started to realize that the answer to my essential question was slowly coming more naturally to me than I had thought it would. To answer my essential question, I need to build connections with the people I’m talking with and ask questions that I am genuinely curious about and want to know the answer to. 

Dr. Mark received the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service in combat operations in Afghanistan and is currently the Head Team Physician and Medical Director for the New England Patriots.