With the excitement of graduation in the air, Focus put this question to members of the Class of 2010: What about your experience of becoming a doctor has surprised you most? Students’ thoughtful reflections follow.
If people were to ask me about my time at HMS, I would probably begin with the young girls I mentored in an afterschool program during my first year. They might hear about the summer I spent in South Africa conducting a survey on anti-HIV therapy or the time I spent in El Salvador teaching reproductive health to adolescents. Maybe I would talk about my experience interviewing ex-prisoners about their medical care while incarcerated. But I would not miss an opportunity to mention the dear friends I have made, the amazing faculty that I have worked with and my opinion on the best restaurants in the North End. Some of my most memorable medical school experiences occurred beyond the Longwood Quadrangle and even this country. The most surprising thing about HMS is not what you can do inside the classroom, but rather what you can do outside of it.
—Chirisse Taylor
I never anticipated the extent to which the age-old “oral tradition” of passing information plays a role in medicine. Everything from taking a good history on a patient to sharing medical knowledge with a team of physicians or family members is grounded in the art of oral communication. The order, tone, even language of the words used can make a difference in the story told. Yet despite these nuances, bloody sputum or bowel obstruction conjures up the same furrowed brow here in Boston as it does in a small hospital in South Africa. Medicine is medicine—as long as you get your story right.
—Manasa Patna
Isn’t it amazing how little and how much I have learned in these four years? That is what I often think to myself as medical school draws to a close. Some days, I am impressed with the wealth of knowledge and experience I have amassed. Most days, I find that the more I learn, the more I realize I don’t know. I am surprised by how simultaneously confident and insecure I am as I begin the next chapter in my training.
—Ian Barbash
I now realize that death is a natural part of life, and although frightening to consider, I have learned that it can be a process that brings peace and comfort to a patient and their family. I have learned that even when death and illness are inevitable, there is still so much we can do to assuage pain, fear, suffering and the uncertainty brought on by the diagnosis of disease. I have learned that physicians hold immense power, not only for their capacity to recognize and treat disease, but moreover for their ability to relate medical knowledge to patients and their families in a way they can appreciate and understand.
—Soroush Zaghi
Being prepared for the wards, it turned out, was helped more than anything else by working part-time restaurant and office jobs growing up and in college. Having supervisors and team dynamics across generations and hierarchies, as well as the subtle satisfaction of properly doing a small task that nonetheless must be done—these experiences are hard to emulate in classrooms or tutorial. HMS provided more than requisite knowledge, but I am glad in retrospect that I put in some real-world work hours, separate from volunteer or student group activities, prior to starting the clinical years.
—Kenneth Gundle
In this age of cynicism regarding all things, especially the future of medicine in America, the thing that has surprised me most about my professors and peers at Harvard Medical School is the extent to which they remain captivated by the magic of the healing art. The economists and politicians among us are convinced that we are headed for Apocalypse—and, indeed, they may be right. Nevertheless, I continue to be inspired by my mentors and friends across the Harvard hospitals, who treat all patients with remarkable intelligence, kindness and humanity.
—Eric Twerdahl
Medicine is extraordinarily complex, but sometimes over these last few years I’ve felt as though medicine is just inaccessible jargon and hand-waving pseudoscience, a cloak we hide behind to conceal our own ignorance. Still, I am amazed by how, in spite of (or because of?) the asymmetries in knowledge and power, patients still open up to their physicians about the most sacred and private aspects of their lives. It’s quite remarkable.
—Harpal Sandhu
Over the past seven years as an MD–PhD student at HMS, one thing I have been surprised by is the number of mentors I have been fortunate to receive guidance from, who not only cared about my professional development but who have also been very interested in making sure that I found balance in my life and developed at a personal level.
—Vijay Sankaran
