The email says it all / determined my future in one quick line of text. Although it seems like just yesterday, I can't even really remember finding out that I'd been accepted to medical school, except to remember the relief / excitement that came with my first acceptance. It certainly does not seem like four years have passed since I walked across the Crim Dell bridge, walked across the stage @ W&M Hall, had a farewell dinner with our closest friends, and put W&M in the rearview mirror. I used to wonder at the notion that time speeds up as we get further into life, but I understand it now.
A fellow classmate posted today on Facebook a status effectively saying "well that was anticlimactic" after receiving the email below. Since I've given up Facebook for Lent (and haven't missed it at all), I didn't see this, but I have to concur with several close friends who disagree entirely with that sentiment. Yes, it is a single, otherwise unremarkable line of text, but I think my friends nailed it when they said that this single decision should cause us all to stop everything and feel humble, to feel honored, that we have been selected to be doctors, that we will soon be entrusted with the lives of complete strangers, that somehow despite everything we have yet to learn, after all that we've already put in, we are to be entrusted to carry the title "M.D." To me, there's nothing anticlimactic about this moment.
It's crazy in that this ends a four year stage in my life, but yet really just opens the door to a life-long continuation of these four years, of further learning, studying, training, and then re-learning and re-evaluating everything. It's hard to describe the feeling of the culmination of a four year project, which is really an eight year project with undergrad science courses (really all courses) included, which is really a 21 year project if you consider my entire educational career. It's even harder to describe the feeling because nothing has really culminated... my life churns full speed ahead down a continuum of academic curiosity and pursuit. The biggest change is that I get to further specialize my study, from focusing solely on human medicine in medical school to focusing solely on Pediatrics for the next three years, to possibly a sub-specialty for 3 more years after that. Following my passion, following my heartlines.
Of course, one of the most important days of my life is still yet to come this Friday, when I will finally find out where I will train for the next 3 years of my life. As always, moments like this serve to remind me to trust in God; He has never failed in his guidance of my life thus far. I owe everything in my life to God's blessing, to my family who has unconditionally loved me and supported me every second of my life, to the support and love of my beautiful girlfriend, and to the truest and most loyal friends a man could ask for. I'll end with these Florence and the Machine lyrics which have become a sort of life motto for me:
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| Just keep following the heartlines on your hands.... |
