Scut

Chang talks about scut work, defined as trivial, unrewarding, tedious, dirty, end disagreeable work. She details her experience being an intern and the physical, backbreaking, day-to-day work of taking care of another person. Acts of caring are sacred: feeding the sick and old, cleaning them, and tending to their wounds are in some ways as intimate as one can get with another body. Of course, the difference between an intern and a nursing aide is that internship is only for a year: it prepares them to ascend to the next rung of the medical hierarchy. They have profound experiences caring for people seeing them everyday, watching people got better or decline, and sometimes watching people die.