four years.

My own take on this senior column in yesterday’s chronicle.

At the beginning, you are all a little naïve. You overestimate your ability to write insightful papers and be good at music theory. Wonder if the friends you meet during orientation week are the people you will call and invite to your weddings in ten or fifteen years, and then never talk to them again. Think that you will major in biomedical engineering, biology, chemistry, and actually major in philosophy, music, math. Wonder if the boy down the hall will ever notice you, and then some how catch the attention of an unassuming upperclassman at a café, over lemon bars and James Joyce. Learn that relationships may end quietly, yet still heartbreakingly, no matter how improbably picturesque their beginnings. Then learn that the person you least expected to fall in love with might actually be the person you want to spend the rest of your life with.

Other lessons are more subtle, and some come too late: the importance of building relationships with professors and faculty members who want to share their worlds of knowledge with you, and to work with you, not just lecture at you. The importance of defining your own set of values, and being able to clearly articulate them. The importance of earning credibility with mentors and administrators who value your ideas and your perspectives. Of figuring out what you love, and doing it well.

You will realize that there is so much more to medicine than may be encompassed in talk about scalpels and needles and biochemical pathways - that it is also about empathy, and patience, and appreciation. Own up to the things you are bad at: math, engineering, drinking alcohol without turning bright red, swallowing your ego, and appreciate the things you are not quite so bad at: philosophy papers, befriending older and wiser peers, organizing quirky art competitions, reflecting, writing and cataloging. You will travel to India and Greece and England and France and the world will feel simultaneously smaller, and yet infinitely large. You will alienate those with whom you once spent many Friday nights laughing and cooking and watching Youtube videos with, and replenish those Friday nights with new faces, because people may drift apart for silly and fickle reasons. But forgive yourself. You will surprise yourself when you land jobs that you had long considered out of your league, and then stand in amazement as underclassmen start to look to you for advice.

And then, sometime in early May, you will realize that with one more paper it will all be over. Your thesis will be done and your plans for the summer, and beyond, in place. You will have bigger ambitions than what that naïve 17 year old could have dared to fathom in her wildest dreams. You are suddenly brave enough to email strangers who seem to have amazing careers, and are impossibly talented at soundbites, and ask them for their nuggets of wisdom. And then you will wonder if it has been enough, if it will ever be enough. Someday, hopefully, you will learn the value of contentment when finally, you tire of the upward climb. But for now, and for a while longer, you will remain easily inspired and easily enthralled. For this is how it feels to be young, in love, and truly fortunate. Today, the most you can hope for is just to be a little bit less naïve, and a little more thankful.