Welcome to Chronics

My name is Marc Skriloff and I am a soon-to-be-graduated senior at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, studying Microbiology with minors in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) and Writing. Chronics represents the culmination of my work as a Sweetland Minor in Writing student in the form of the minor's Capstone project; it encompasses a distinction that I have subconsciously let marinate and boil in my mind throughout my time as an undergraduate student both before and during an unprecedented public health crisis.

 

If there is any single thing that I have learned over the past four years, it is that high-quality writing stems from a synergy of curiosity and discomfort -- a question, a critique, a gut feeling, or in this case, an observation -- and then hitting the ground running to translate subsequent branching thoughts into clear and cohesive prose. Chronics exemplifies this process of starting with a foundational observation and building the discussion from the ground up, fostering a meandering discussion about a topic that is simultaneously niche to specific populations but entirely relevant to everyone. 

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During this time of global crisis, I hope that Chronics will help provide a glimpse into a topic that falls under the pandemic umbrella but has been continually shadowed by other happenings in the world. The pandemic has shown all of us how drastically people's paradigm of normalcy can shift in an incredibly short period of time. Now that we find ourselves moving toward establishing a "new normal,"  I want to get people questioning not just the source and symptoms of misunderstanding, but the fundamental institutions at the root of a deep-seated yet very reparable problem.