Life under the quill

Yesterday was an excellent day for meeting people. The karma started with being asked out by the guy next to me in the DMV line. (Seriously?!) I did not pursue that angle! However, later I met up with a friend of a friend who is getting a PhD in physics at Case. He also happens to be a gamer and a bicyclist -- check and check! Then the two newbies in my house joined S at a party of the international folks. Turns out the international students have regular meetups and thus you get an interesting mix of physics, engineering, and medical students from everywhere between Ireland and Iran. On stepping up to the question "does anyone know bachata?" I discovered an excellent salsa dancer/ biomedical engineer who happens to know all the salsa places in town -- check!

Okay, I think I just covered contacts in several of my chosen hobbies. So far, so good!

I now have a white coat. Oh, it's two sizes too big, but I do have it. We all lined up in Symphony Hall amidst crowds of parents, said our oath and got our coats. Here are a few moments while it's fresh...

Severance Hall is lovely, lovelier in fact than Boston's (which, like all of Boston, has a lived-in look to it). It has shining inlay, pale as mother-of-pearl or mithril. However it's surprisingly small, only 1000 to 1500 seats which frankly is smaller than my high school auditorium. Yet this is the largest indoor space on campus.

They have the students rise and be applauded for their hard work. They have the parents rise and be applauded for their support. And I can't help but think most of these kids just went through this a month ago. Isn't this an oath of office? Isn't this like receiving your fatigues? This isn't supposed to be self-congratulatory but rather a rite of passage about obligation and responsibilities. When the President swears in, you don't congratulate him and his family on a well-run campaign, you make him swear to uphold the Constitution and listen to the will of the people. I don't need a pat on the back.

The coat is giant. They specifically asked for our measurements and yet all of the women's coats are one to two sizes too big. They also button according to the way men's shirts button -- a little disconcerting. All the women in the class now look like 8yr olds trying on their father's coat. I look childish, not professional.

Afterwards we depart in a swirl of fanfare (there was, in fact, a brass quartet.) We go back into the foyer and, as others are taking photos with their family, I swing by the delicious food. I leave a space for the waitress, about to set down an incredibly heavy platter of grilled veggies, but in swirls a doctor to congratulate another student. They stand and chatter and meanwhile I can almost feel the waitress's biceps ache. Does no one see her?

This was and continues to be a personal journey for me. I don't need the trumpet fanfare. I don't need congratulations on managing the byzantine bureaucracy of the application process. Instead, I plan to quietly and without too much complaint shoulder the burden of learning as much as I can so as to serve my future patients faithfully and with respect. Offer me congratulations in seven years. Till then, I have work to do.