Welcome Freshmen!

I was walking to the gym yesterday when I spotted some bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young twenty-somethings in shiny, new short white coats.  It's that time of year again--the matriculation of medical students. 

As I bustled by, I couldn't help but feel a bit nostalgic.  I started medical school exactly a decade ago. 

As I watched the new medical students take pictures with their families, I felt a lot of mixed emotions.  On one hand, I am so excited for these newbies.  I can honestly say that they are entering one of the most intriguing jobs a person can have.  As physicians, we have such wonderful opportunities in so many arenas.  We get to meet interesting and incredible people, including our patients and colleagues.  We get to see and do things that most everyone doesn't.  We get to learn, research, teach, travel.  We have great job security.

However, with those great benefits come incredible risks.  When non-medical people ask me about my medical education and residency, I quote Dickens:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

The best of times for all of the reasons I stated above, but also the worst of times for the many sacrifices we make to do this--personally, mentally, physically, financially.  We get to push ourselves to the limits of our beings in order to do what we do.  I don't need to go into the gory details, we all know them.

Though it sounds cheesy, the emotion that overtook all of the others when I saw those medical students was an incredible sense of pride.  Pride that I made it through, and pride that there are still people who want to do this despite the risks and benefits.