2004 commencement characterized in a word: Namaste
Graduating medical student Andrew Suen (foreground) wears a lei at Saturday's commencement. Over his shoulder, fellow 2004 grad Adrian Thomas (center) gets a hug from Vivek Jain, who graduated from the medical school last year. In all, 2004 saw 90 students receive MDs, 70 receive PhDs and 23 receive MS degrees.
BY MITZI BAKER
While the keynote speaker at the School of MedicineÂ’s commencement ceremony was a high-profile actor and AIDS advocate, the themes of the day remained personal: balance, oneness, freedom, flexibility and life paths.
Speakers who addressed the class of 2004 agreed that the new grads may be facing a world rife with conflict and unmet need, but the solutions they bring will stem from being true to themselves and others.
About 1,700 people gathered Saturday under the tent on the Dean's Lawn where Dean Philip Pizzo, MD, introduced the ceremony by speaking on the interdisciplinary spirit embodied by the nearby Clark Center, which opened last year. Ross Bright, MD, associate dean of alumni affairs, followed by calling upon the graduating students to serve as activists, advocates and ambassadors of Stanford.
Then things got personal. Being a Stanford medical student is a lot like practicing yoga, said medical graduate Kristen Clague Reihman, nominated by classmates to represent them at the ceremony. "In yoga, much like in medical school, you often find yourself hopelessly unprepared for the painful and challenging positions you are asked to assume," she said.
Yoga, she continued, calls for people to greet each other with the word "namaste." "Roughly translated it means 'the goodness in me sees the goodness in you.' How lovely is that? Not exactly what you heard every day on morning rounds, so the analogy breaks down somewhat, but still I think there is a comparison to be made. Everything I needed to know about strength, balance and flexibility I had already learned here," she said.
Her advice to fellow graduates: "Do not be afraid to admit your own ignorance or to hold a patient's hand or to cry in front of your attending when your patient dies. It is the little choices like these that form who we are and who we become as doctors, as people, and we have the chance to make them every single day. Above all, let us never forget to be human beings, or to be our true selves, or how important it is to continue to follow our own path. Let us teach the world that doctors can be strong, balanced, whole people and let us change the face of medicine."
Reihman's words were followed by the self-described "Homer Simpson" humor of Cris Myers Niell, who represented the graduating PhD class. He posed the question of why someone would willingly choose the life of a grad student, living on a stipend amounting to only "half of the definition of the poverty level in the Bay Area." The beauty of research, he said, is learning things nobody knew before – that’s what makes the pursuit worthwhile despite the inevitable poverty.
Niell also spoke of the joy of discovery and how graduate students have ultimate freedom in deciding their paths.
The importance of choosing a path was elaborated upon by Paul Michael Glaser, best-known for playing Starsky in the 1970s TV series "Starsky and Hutch." Today, Glaser plays a central role in the fight against AIDS. His wife Elizabeth was infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, through a blood transfusion and passed the virus to their two children. Their daughter, Ariel, died from AIDS and their son, Jake, now 19, is HIV-positive. Elizabeth started a foundation in 1988 – named in her honor after her death in 1994 – that was instrumental in procuring funding for AIDS research. Glaser is now the honorary chair of the foundation.
Glaser said when his life got caught up with the AIDS epidemic, he had to choose a path: to fall into the helplessness of a bitter man or to find in his fear and helplessness a way to learn and grow.
"Doctors were no longer an occasional visit for a physical or some passing concern. Researchers were no longer magicians I read about in magazines and newspapers," said Glaser, who once played a doctor on a soap opera. "I got to see their humanity often guarded, hidden behind their white coats and their stethoscopes and microscopes."
Some of the physicians he encountered were creative in dealing with the mysterious illness that was AIDS, he said, and some only focused on what was already known, much to Glaser's frustration.
In order to become more creative, Glaser advised the 2004 graduates to be committed to admitting their fears and vulnerabilities. Doing so, he said, would better enable them to heal and discover. Future doctors and researchers, he added, must be committed to looking beyond what they think they already know.
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