Yale Daily News

Updated: Monday, November 23, 2009 1:03 a.m.

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‘Exam’ makes the grade

Published Friday, February 16, 2007

Amid the “filleting” and “sawing” apart of arms, legs and pelvises going on all over during her first year of medical school, Pauline Chen — author of the memoir “Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality” and a former Yale-New Haven Hospital resident — begins to understand that she must “learn to separate [her] emotional self from [her] scientific self” if she is ever to “overcome death.” But it is also while dissecting a cadaver that Chen realizes the futility of such a project: No matter how hard she tries, she cannot distance herself completely.

What makes “Final Exam”...

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