{"id":574505,"date":"2010-05-21T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/?p=46968"},"modified":"2010-05-21T10:00:28","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T14:00:28","slug":"poetry-on-ice-paper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/574505","title":{"rendered":"Poetry on ice, paper"},"content":{"rendered":"

On May 27, thousands of students are graduating from Harvard. Each has a successful past to relate, and a promising future to embrace. In a series of profiles, Gazette writers showcase some of these stellar graduates.<\/em><\/p>\n

T<\/span>here\u2019s ice-skating, and there\u2019s poetry. And then there\u2019s ice-skating poetry written by a former professional athlete who is a pre-med English concentrator. Loren Galler Rabinowitz is all of the above and \u2014 if you can believe it \u2014 more.<\/p>\n

Galler Rabinowitz, who grew up in Brookline, Mass., and Barbados, already has lived a full life. From the ages of 2 to 20, her home was on the ice, where she eventually traveled around the world competing professionally with her skating partner David Mitchell, garnering acclaim as U.S. Junior Champions and 2004 bronze medalists at the U.S. Figure Skating<\/a> Championships. But, she said, she always knew she\u2019d eventually land at Harvard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the most important things for me as a professional athlete was that I always took school very seriously,\u201d said Galler Rabinowitz, who attended high school full time, even after training for four hours each morning. She deferred enrollment at Harvard to compete professionally for two more years after graduation, taking up residence at Adams House in 2007.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that I knew I was going to miss when I stopped skating was the constant creative outlet,\u201d said Galler Rabinowitz, \u201cso I signed up for a creative writing course as a freshman.\u201d<\/p>\n

She eventually was chosen as a thesis advisee by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham<\/a>, the Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, from nearly 100 creative-writing thesis applications.<\/p>\n

Her 70-plus-page manuscript, \u201cThe Invisible Encyclopedia of Dance,\u201d recalls the tenuous stake on which glory rests, and evokes dance moves using the skater\u2019s trademark measured precision \u2014 only on the poetic line. In \u201cIce Dancer,\u201d Galler Rabinowitz writes: \u201cThe position must be maintained. \/ There is only up or down. \/ There are only laurels or sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

The poems also delve into headier matter, such as sickness and death. In the fall of 2008, Galler Rabinowitz began shadowing a pastor at Mount Auburn Hospital. Her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor and 50-year New Orleans resident, had died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. \u201cI was very interested in how people deal with loss,\u201d recalled Galler Rabinowitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that most draws me to becoming a doctor is a sense of compassion and being a humanitarian,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s missing from medical education now. It\u2019s sort of technical and diagnostic. I want to make the experience of going to the doctor\u2019s office enjoyable and not terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Galler Rabinowitz is considering medical schools and eventually wants to enter pediatrics. Medicine wasn\u2019t always a career goal, but her parents are also physicians, and, she said, \u201cThey\u2019re so passionate that it\u2019s infectious.\u201d<\/p>\n

But medicine might wait a few years, too. Galler Rabinowitz is eyeing some of Boston\u2019s M.F.A. programs in creative writing and may divert elsewhere, at least for a little while.<\/p>\n

But this juggling is nothing new. Even at Harvard, Galler Rabinowitz coached youth ice skaters, waking every morning at 5:30 to meet them on the ice. That quickly led to her tutoring them and advising with SATs and college prep.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s so interesting is how much of my skate training \u2014 discipline, work ethic, attention to detail, creativity \u2014 has been applicable to my activities at Harvard. I really like being able to show my young students the ways they can apply what they learn on the ice to all sorts of things they\u2019re doing,\u201d she said. \u201cI think a lot of my successes at Harvard were due to that very specific training.\u201d<\/p>\n

Galler Rabinowitz is also adamant about giving back. Every Christmas she runs a charity event at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, raising money for Globe Santa and even teaching a few skating lessons. \u201cI get to do good things and wear a sparkly dress,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat could be better?\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s less glamorous fieldwork. Galler Rabinowitz frequently volunteers at her mother\u2019s Barbados-based clinic that treats malnourished children. She\u2019s also taught creative writing classes in a shelter for abused women and children there.<\/p>\n

Though her classmates often looked her up on Wikipedia, there\u2019s no sign any of her well-chronicled achievements have gone to her head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had the privilege of competing at the highest athletic level and attending Harvard,\u201d Galler Rabinowitz said. \u201cAnd I didn\u2019t really anticipate being able to merge my love of writing and being a future physician, but it really worked out that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next in the series: Cheng Ho and the tragedy that changed his life.
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On May 27, thousands of students are graduating from Harvard. Each has a successful past to relate, and a promising future to embrace. In a series of profiles, Gazette writers showcase some of these stellar graduates. There\u2019s ice-skating, and there\u2019s poetry. And then there\u2019s ice-skating poetry written by a former professional athlete who is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4175,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4175"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574505\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}