Graduation

After 4 grueling years (well okay only 2 of them were grueling and the last one was wonderful) I graduated from Medical School. It was awesome. Obviously I've been looking forward to this for some time now, but the actual graduation was better than I could have imagined.

There were a bunch of festivities in Pikeville that lead up to graduation, but they were mostly a waste of time (except it was nice to catch up with classmates) so I won't waste space here with that.

I was full of emotions from the time that I put on my graduation robe until I went to bed after the Cavaliers game that night. We started out backstage for the processional and as we walked to our seats I passed Melissa sitting with my mother as well as my brother with his wife and son (they came down from Cleveland). My dad wasn't sitting with them because he was walking in the processional as well.

The commencement speaker was listed as some Kentucky health official and I was expecting a long boring talk about how we are the future of medicine and we need to be examples to our community blah, blah, blah. The address that he gave was nothing of the sort. He spent most of his career as a small town general practitioner and used various experiences during that time to illustrate how important it is for us to be worthy of the trust we will receive from our patients as well as pointing out the role of humility, honesty and many other basic tenets of being good physicians. I thought it was one of the best commencement addresses I have ever heard.

After the commencement address we proceeded with the awarding of degrees and the hooding ceremony. I started across the stage and received my degree on one side then walked to the other side where my father placed the hood over my shoulders.

There are various embraces that I have engraved in my mind. Some of these include embracing my parents before I left on my mission and then again when I returned home, holding my wife on the day of our engagement as well as the day we were wed and again with the birth of each child in our family, and the hug I got from Melissa when we were accepted to medical school. On Saturday I added three more to the list. First came the embrace I received from my dad directly after he placed my hood over my shoulders. No words were exchanged, and none were needed. Second came after the recessional. After leaving the gym I was looking for my dad and I saw him near the doors looking somewhat emotional. I high-tailed it over there to thank him for hooding me and he gave me a hug and told me how proud he was of me. At 31 years of age I am dumbfounded by the power my father possesses to fill me with confidence and validate all of my emotions just by expressing his pleasure in my actions and accomplishments. The final embrace (in reverse order of significance as you may have deduced by now) came just before I returned to my seat after receiving my diploma and hood. Melissa had come up closer to take a picture of the moment that my father hooded me and she was still standing near the bottom of the stage. Rather than head straight for my seat I stalled for just long enough to give her a hug. I think one or both of us may have said congratulations, but the feelings within that embrace I shall never forget.

Throughout graduation I contemplated on the emotions that I was experiencing. I had looked forward to this day for so long and now that it was here I felt different than I had expected. For a few hours there was no thought of the money, or the prestige of being a doctor (not that I think I have ever dwelt on that too much anyway). I wasn't concerned with being a positive influence in the lives of my patients or my community. I wasn't even thinking about how nice it would be to be able to take care of the needs of my children in the years to come. For a few hours it was about personal accomplishment. That may sound somewhat arrogant or selfish and if so I am sorry, but on Saturday for maybe the first time in my life I finished something that took more than I thought I had. This was definitely not something I did alone. I had a lot of help from my friends, family and especially Melissa, but when I sat down to take the tests for which I had spent so much time preparing it was just me (with a lot of help from above).

There is a positiveness that comes with accomplishment as I'm sure many of you out there have felt. That feeling comes not from doing those things that you know you can do, rather in doing those things that God knows you can do. Medical school was one of those things for me.