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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What was the default option for poor elderly people in the time of Mabel’s study?

2. How does Gawande characterize the “newest view” about why we age (32)?

3. What does Lou Sanders’ daughter Shelley compare him to when he comes to live with her and her family?

4. What does Gawande say is the biggest difference between how people age today and how they used to age?

5. How does Gawande characterize the corpse he was given to work with, his first semester of medical school?

Short Essay Questions

1. What perspective does Gawande’s father offer on Alice Hobson’s aging process?

2. What was Lou Sanders’ experience of assisted living like?

3. How does Gawande characterize the problems surrounding Alice Hobson’s declining health?

4. How does Gawande characterize the finances of geriatrics?

5. How does Gawande characterize Ivan Ilych’s experience of dying?

6. How does Gawande describe his exposure to training about mortality in medical school?

7. What events led to Alice Hobson saying “I’m ready” to her son, and then dying?

8. When did the experience of aging and dying come home for Gawande?

9. What is the triumph in the story of Felix and Bella Silverstone?

10. What is rectangularization, and how does it affect society?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

How do the problems Gawande describes in health care relate to other problems that are characteristic of American culture? Are American attitudes to health care related to attitudes about climate change? Environmentalism? Labor or environmental regulations? Pick an issue and show how the Americanness is similar or different.

Essay Topic 2

What is the reform you would suggest or support, to change the nature of elder care in our culture? What problem would your reform address, and what are the potential complications it would create? Who would be in favor of your reform, and who would not? Why?

Essay Topic 3

Have you or your family thought about plans or had discussions about care trajectories for the elder members of your family? What made those conversations possible, or made them impossible to have? Describe the impediments to holding these necessary conversations, and describe either how your family overcame them, or who stands in the way of having them? Why is it so hard to have these hard conversations?

(see the answer keys)

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