The Humerus Daily

BORING, MD—A humble city of 44,000 residents just west of the Susquehanna River, York, Pennsylvania is best known as a stopping point for travelers who get lost on their way to Gettysburg or Dutch Wonderland. When I first informed those close to me that this wayward dot on the map would be where my surgery rotation was taking place, I was most often greeted with “where’s that?” and “oh, take a picture in Times Square for me.”  However, I found during my time in York that there’s a certain charm to the miles-long plots of variably busy strip malls that makes for a wonderful student experience. 

Take, for example, the shopping center immediately adjacent to the hotel at which the other medical students and I were posted. Featured prominently next to a grocery chain and the county office for a major political party is an abandoned cineplex with posters for Madame Web perched in the windowsills. Fun as it may be to imagine that the horrors of showing Madame Web on the big screen are what drove the theater out of business, I consider the closure far more emblematic of Yorkers’ growing desire to see the rest of what the city has to offer. From taking in our nation’s history to basking in central Pennsylvania’s breathtaking natural landmarks, anything an intrepid adventurer could want and more is easily and conveniently accessible—once one exits York. Indeed, while it may appear at first glance from the overabundance of road signs and advertisements for the health system that the WellSpan hospital and its affiliates in York are the city’s greatest attractions, it became increasingly clear during my time there that some books are best judged by their covers and that the hospital is, in fact, York’s most noteworthy landmark. 

Other attractions for students in York include relics of days long gone in Center City. For instance, just off the road between the hotel and hospital sits an open Jimmy John’s across the way from an open McDonald’s. Both serve as welcome reminders of simpler times, when those specific varieties of mediocre fast food could be found on or near Jefferson’s campus, and when a Big Mac was noticeably cheaper than a month’s rent. In any case, cheap food and drink are abundant in York. During my unfathomably limited downtime, students could often be found enjoying reasonably priced and moderately watered-down margaritas at any of York’s seemingly endless supply of similar Mexican restaurants whose names I couldn’t possibly hope to remember. 

Since leaving, I’ve grown fonder of the mark that York left on me. Sure, I spent most of my time in the operating room with surgeons who were visibly annoyed by my presence. And sure, the very nice accommodations we were fitted with came without a heating element in the kitchen. And sure, I have to live with the unbelievable fact that I now have positive confirmation that somebody, somewhere paid legal US currency to see Madame Web. But when all is said and done, the most important takeaway from my York experience has nothing to do with what I did there, or why I was there in the first place, but rather with how I could use it as a punchline in a satirical travel diary.