I’m Muhammad Siddiq, a graduate of the University of Georgia–where I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in English while completing a pre-medical track. I also completed a creative writing certificate from Emory Continuing Education during a gap year before medical school. Currently, I am a third-year DO student at PCOM-GA, from where I will be graduating in 2025.
During my undergraduate years at the University of Georgia, I became interested in the intersection of healthcare and the humanities. This began when I started writing for a student-run publication called Stethoscope Magazine–I went on to copy-edit and, eventually, join the editorial board as director of campus outreach. As I gained more experience volunteering in medical settings and progressed further into my degree program, I began to realize that healthcare and the humanities are built on the same core commitments: empathy and communication. With that understanding, I see medical humanities and narrative medicine as fields that I hope to contribute towards in the future.
Alongside narrative medicine, I hold an interest in media studies–which I made the unofficial emphasis of my English degree when I decided to take coursework on comics, film, writing for the web, literature and media, and Shakespeare and media. In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, I’ve found it important to think about how we interact differently with various forms of media (e.g. an audiobook vs. an e-book vs. print; comics vs. prose; video games vs. film). Within this area also fall concerns regarding sustainability and accessibility–now more relevant than ever as media consumption increases and climate change exists as an ever-looming threat.
Currently, I’m on clinical rotations and getting ready to apply to family medicine residency programs! I currently have a project on hold: a paper titled “Paul Baker’s Hamlet and the Role of Audio in Shakespeare Studies” for the University of Georgia English department’s eventual digital Hamlet artifact exhibit. My essay titled “Lost in Translation: Examining the Manipulation of Las Casas’s Brevísma relación de la destrucción de las Indias” was published in Vol. 10 of the LURe Journal. In the past, I have recorded a podcast discussing sustainability and the downfall of Atari (this went on to receive an honorable mention for the University of Georgia 2019-2020 Digital Humanities Prize) and presented a keynote on how digital comic-book platforms have impacted user experience.
More about me:
- I’m currently in both a writing group and poetry group!
- I enjoy postcolonial literature (my favorite novel is Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie) and thinking about Muslim experiences in the west
- I’m passionate about video games, their status as interactive media, and how powerful they’ve become as a communication platform
- I’m a huge sports fan. I, myself, play golf; but, I’m obsessed with my local sports teams (i.e. Georgia Bulldogs, Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta Hawks, Atlanta Braves, and Atlanta United)
You can find more on everything above by visiting my blog!
