Lema Abuoqab. For me, my white coat symbolizes the empathy of the human condition; it is a reminder to me to always speak to my patients kinder, hold my patients’ hands tighter, and encourage my patients to hold their heads higher.

Rahi Patel. I think of my father. Did he eat less after his elder brother passed away in his 30’s from colorectal cancer? He tells me of how he would walk to work crying after his passing, with his hands shoved in his pockets during cold Chicago winter mornings.

Jason Denoncourt. Provide my group with the courage, strength, wisdom to dissect with respect and study the intricacies of your creation.

The Class of 2027. To me, wearing the white coat is a symbol of shared humanity. To wear it is to say, ‘I am human, alongside you. I see, hear, and understand your pain, because part of me has been there too.'”

David Hatem. I found myself being taught, by a student and a patient together. I wish I had learned this lesson much earlier.

The Class of 2026. While I may not be able to make the road rise up for all my patients, I can be the wind on their back, sunshine on their face, and soft rain on their fields, doing all I possibly can to ease their burden.

Amanda Hazeltine. We become their extended family in many ways, and they become ours. And sometimes, a connection to a shared tradition that once was lost, is found.

Atinuke G. Oyinbo. A frustrating feeling of powerlessness was now every waking sensation. What exactly I should have done to prevent her early departure still remains a dispiriting mystery to me.

Karishma Patel. You’re going to remember why we’re even putting ourselves through all of this. Because it’s worth it.

Michael Hirsch. There is never anything good to say when someone passes away- but the consensus statement that most people arrive at when they see a nonagenarian has left us -“Well, she had a good long run”. Chronologically that is true. But my mother and I knew better.

Divya Bhatia. As such, stories have always been a way for me to connect with others, look deeper into their life and be present for them.

Bob Singer. When a doctor is quiet, and just listens, sometimes people speak up and tell you things they have been dying to say but never got the space or the nerve to say.

Sara Wang. Besides all the physical pain, I was also angry at my own body for doing this to me. I was doing all I could to make up for feeling less than normal, less than a good athlete, less than a functional girlfriend.

Michael Hirsch. Opposition and conflict should not mean ouster and ostracism.

Rose Theroux. The scars from that hospitalization, although healed, are still visible. The internal scars are not, and have taken much longer to heal.

Michael Hirsch. We had it within us because that is why we pursued this field of endeavor- to help the sick and heal the world.

Pamela Adelstein. These modest gestures are a mere Band-Aid. What will it take for the government to truly pay attention and act? What will it take to shift centuries of inequity, which are all too real?

Hugh Silk. And yet that is what I will remember years from now. The patients I call each day – scared, lonely, looking for a familiar voice to answer their questions, to offer comfort and offer a friendly smile or chat.

Megan Hansen. To be a medical student is often to feel a frustrated helplessness—the kind that comes with knowing that we should have the knowledge, the resources, the training to deal with a problem, but that for as much as we know, there is so much more that we do not.

Pamela Adelstein. In this era of Covid-19, I move between two worlds. It isn’t time travel – it feels more like space travel.