A Giant in Disguise

It’s been a whole eight days. It occurs to me that my suspicion is already confirmed: as much as I want to dedicate myself to writing an award winning blog that will forever document the medical school experience, it is probably my inability to do it that more clearly reflects reality. Humble pie hath been served in abundance, friends, and I’m not talking a la mode. After eight days I could write this post about the fascinating case studies we’ve done—by far my favorite part of academics. I could describe the diverse and enormously talented class I find myself in (seriously, where do they find such dynamic people??). I could talk about my trepidation about my metamorphosis that they say will only take four years until I’m qualified to actually be Dr. Me. But I think that’s been done enough. Instead I want to talk Biochemistry. Well, actually about a biochemist. We had our first lecture on metabolic pathways today, a subject I have been dreading since I got serious about medical school. The lecture wasn’t too bad, truth be told, and I guess I studied enough in those painful preparatory classes that my head isn’t exploding every time she throws out pyruvate dehydrogenase like most people talk about reality TV stars. The take home, though, was Dr. C; standing in front of our lecture hall of 120+ eager first year (ok, second week) medical students is a barely five foot tall, petite woman in black rimmed glasses that nearly consume her face. She is very clearly older than my grandmother, and I’m in my thirties. Her voice is cracked and her skin shows the crevices and ripples of a long life spent teaching and exploring science. As she elucidates the finer points of how the various pathways are intertwined and regulated, I can’t help think of how her life and mine are interlinked. When she was making career choices decades ago, surely she must have felt pressure to conform to normative roles for women. Did people tell her to focus on her family and leave a career to others? Because she made the choice to pursue Biochemistry, decades later her pathway has influenced countless others and “upregulated” the processes that will one day produce doctors. Thanks, Dr. C. The saying goes that we all stand on the shoulders of giants. My giants have frequently been brilliant octogenarian ladies.