At this moment, I’m on the top of medical student evolutionary tree. I’m a fourth year, strutting my stuff in the hospital and casually describing intubating, sticking and poking people. A few days ago, I got to run a book discussion for the new first year medical students.

As I walked into the medical school I walked down memory lane a little. I relived the boring hours of my first years orientation and how little it oriented me to medical school. I relived the shock of my first day of anatomy, and how I was told to “go read” since my group didn’t dissect that day- but I had no idea what to read… I remember how I felt, going from a cocky, confident, relaxed college student who was big fish in his little pond to a medical student who was surrounded by people who were smarter and studied harder. I remember the feelings of inadequacy when I didn’t get an honors grade on an exam, or it seemed that my peers were so much more clued into a concept than I. I remembered feeling like I didn’t belong- that somehow I’d crept into medical school and would be discovered and laughed out.

I recalled how magically in my third year of medical school, when I was seeing actual patients my strengths came out. I could talk to people, get a good history, make a solid differential and decide how to work them up. I could explain in non-medicalese why I thought they needed something and work with them when they didn’t want it. I remember beginning to enjoy going to the hospital, feeling like I was where I could do good work, where my actions and my words meant something. I remember the first time I was called “Doctor” in the hospital and how I meekly responded, I’m just a medical student.

I remembered how in my recent Emergency Medicine rotations, I was being given great autonomy and freedom. I could confidently walk into a room of someone who was sick and make decisions to make them better. I had acquired the skills to take care of people- diagnosis, treatment and decision making. I remembered most recently when I was leaving the room of a woman who had come in with abdominal pain how she had said in parting to me, “Thank you doctor” and I had smiled in return as I walked out not correcting her.

If you told my first year self that I was going to be who I am now in a few short years I’d have reacted in disbelief. At this moment I can scarcely believe that I was once that timid, that new or that scared.

I told the new first years some of this. I doubt they believed me. But maybe in a few years when they’re looking back at their beginnings they will.

Oh, and in terms of advice for you first years, here it is. Watch “Dead Poets Society”. Then you go and carpe the hell out of that diem.