UC Davis School of Medicine Class of 2013 Student Commencement Speech — by Taylor Nichols, MD
Deans, faculty, family, friends, distinguished guests thank you all for being here today for this class. And to those of you who put up with us through these tough years, thank you for being there and supporting us, teaching us, or mentoring us along the way.
Undoubtedly, we couldn’t have made to this point without you — graduating from medical school and completing what has, at least for many of us, been a long and challenging endeavor. For some of us, this may finally be a moment we have dreamed about for years. For others, today may represent the fulfillment of a decision to go to medical school that didn’t come until after pursuing another career. And yet for others, this may just be another event to sit through before beginning the next stage of training, like listening to Dr. Holcroft lecture about the hematocrit of the Arctic diving seal, when all you really want is for rounds to just be over.
Now, when we arrived at medical school we were told this process would take endurance, that these years would be an “exercise in delayed gratification.” During our first two years, we thought we had it bad when we had to sit through, or fall asleep during, countless hours of lectures. (Actually, the lectures were recorded, and you could just download them after and listen to them at double speed, but don’t tell anyone that I said not to go to class.) And we took far too many exams. Every two weeks? Really? Who came up with that idea? But the term endurance took on a new meaning as we entered third year and endured Internal Medicine rounds that lasted for hours, occasionally lasting so long that you might be unfortunate enough to hear the phrase: “Meet back here after lunch so we can finish rounding.” On surgery, rounds were quicker, with the added benefit of waking up hours before the sun even came close to reaching the horizon. We read numerous journal articles to present to our attendings so that we would at least look like we actually knew what we were talking about. Well, to be honest, we only read the abstracts. We worried ourselves sick, and then worried some more — about our patients, about our classmates, about ourselves. We provided a shoulder to cry on, or we did the crying. We made mistakes, and hopefully we learned from them. And we learned a lot, about medicine, about life, and about death. Through it all we had your support, and we had each other.
You see, that is what is wonderful about this class. We have such a diversity of experiences and different personalities, yet the close bonds we have forged have made enduring medical school as enjoyable and rewarding as it has been. We have a class full of extraordinary individuals, with stories of overcoming great challenges to reach this point, stories that show the power of human resilience, and the heights to which that singular, inner motivation can lead us to achieve, despite the odds. So while the UC Davis School of Medicine has been a special place for a number of reasons, the greatest is for fostering a positive environment in which the faces of these stories could meet and form a community stronger than the individuals themselves.
Beyond the sense of community within the school, UC Davis fostered the development of a similar level of appreciation for our greater Sacramento community as well. We began our journey through medical school not just with anatomy lab and physiology lectures, but also in the student-run clinics, in which we were able to gain our footing working with patients by providing free medical care to the underprivileged, disenfranchised, or minority populations of Sacramento. We learned to maintain this social consciousness by observing the value that our institution placed on these student-run clinics, observing this on a personal level by watching our already busy physicians volunteer their time to come to the clinics on the weekends to lead us and to teach us. We came to understand that providing this kind of care was a fundamentally important value to uphold, even when working with some of the most challenging patient populations a provider could face. And we came to see the necessity of providing this kind of care as we treated the uninsured and neglected patient population in the hospital throughout our clinical years.
My fellow graduates, as we move forward, we are entering a world that needs us. It needs the sense of community that we have created while at UC Davis. It needs us to be a part of the conversation. It needs us to be there for our patients when no one else will be, both as clinicians and as advocates. We are arriving into a healthcare environment full of uncertainty. With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the medical system is changing and progressing more rapidly than at any time in history. Do not allow this uncertainty or these changes to cloud your judgment, to compromise the values and beliefs that you came to medical school with, or the skills that you have learned since. Technology continues to develop faster than we can keep up with, and computer screens are dominating not just our personal lives, but our hospitals and clinics as well. Do not forget the value of your personal interactions with your patients, of touch and the art of the physical exam, of listening with an empathetic ear and a diagnosticians wit.
Think about how far we have come and how much we have learned during our time here. Reflect back on your thoughts before you entered UC Davis. Consider how little we all knew about medicine, and just what exactly we were getting ourselves into. Remember how you felt listening to Dr. Fitzgerald speak at Induction, affirming that “the purpose of a medical education is to prepare yourself to be of service to others.” Picture in your mind the well-intentioned thoughts you had when you applied to medical school, the grandiose visions of changing the world. Time is a crazy thing, instead of changing the world, it changes us. It fills us with knowledge, insight, maturity, and hopefully allows us to develop a strong sense of character. And maybe, just maybe, the character we develop will shape that knowledge and insight into wisdom. I believe UC Davis and the values we have learned here have helped us build the sense of character required to become not just exceptional physicians, but exceptional leaders.
Someone older and wiser once told me to always “use my powers for good.” My fellow classmates, we will graduate today as doctors, and with those letters of M.D. we earn both power and responsibility. Our patients will be looking to us for answers, for insight, for hope, and for inspiration. Let us not forget where we have come from nor all we have learned, the inspiring stories of our classmates, nor the harrowing stories of our patients along the way. Let us remember our moral and ethical responsibilities to provide just care to all of our patients in an otherwise unjust world. Let us go forward and use our powers for good. We will be setting the example that others will follow. If we do not, I don’t imagine others will. I can’t think of a better group to take on this challenge than the people I am graduating with today. Thank you and congratulations to the Class of 2013!
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