HMS/HSDM CLASS DAY

Grads Take a Look at the Bigger Picture

Class Day’s three student speakers reflected on their years studying medicine and dentistry, but also reminded graduates of the bigger purpose they are about to serve, in the lives of individual patients, as players in the medical and dental community, and as citizens with new confidence and perspective.

Steve Gilbert Padraig Dennehy

HSDM grad Padraig Dennehy, in a speech titled “Possibilities and Probabilities,” urged graduates to reflect on the paths that led them to Harvard and on the people who helped them get there. “I have no doubt that the stories are as diverse and amazing as the people who stand before me,” he said, adding that the sacrifices they’ve made have left them well-deserving of their hard-earned degrees. With this honor, however, comes great responsibility, Dennehy said. He urged his fellow graduates to instill a sense of duty into their burgeoning careers.

“There are rewards in life far greater than being able to upgrade your Boxster to a 911 Twin Turbo,” Dennehy told his classmates. He acknowledged that he and his fellow grads are “truly lucky” to be entering a career that enriches others’ lives while also providing personal satisfaction and fulfillment.

Steve Gilbert Atul Kamath

In his speech, “The Good Samaritan,” Atul Kamath recounted a time not long ago when, while on a flight to California for residency interviews, an announcement came over the intercom asking if any doctors were on board. He hesitantly pressed his call button and, after a moment of uncertainty, realized that he had “taken the next step” toward being a physician.

Kamath noted that uncertainty is built into the field of medicine. “Medicine is this unknown, this uncomfortable feeling. Medicine brings problems we are not able to solve in the here and now,” he said, adding that even bigger challenges are yet to come, “problems that will force us to address issues beyond the individual patient,” like health insurance disparity and scientific progress. Returning to the theme of transition, Kamath surmised that the short white coats medical students wear are more than symbols of their inexperience, but symbols of the transformation they are undergoing.

Steve Gilbert Joseph Wright

Joe Wright’s speech, titled “Found Down,” began with a story: a man is “found down,” for no apparent reason. Different versions of this story happen hundreds of times a day, but “this is its essence,” Wright said. “A person falls, and in small and large ways, a huge network of people begins to pick him up again.” Each of these stories is a version of the same question, Wright said. “When we see suffering, do we look away, or do we go towards it?” He cautioned his fellow grads not to forget they will be just one part of a web of nurses, paramedics, social workers, and others who all must respond to this question, day after day.

“In small or large ways, most of us have come to sit here today partly because of people like this, people who taught us how to behave in the face of suffering: teachers, friends, family,” Wright said, adding that this lesson is often taught by example. “They’ve seen us fall,” he said. “In one way or another, they have found us down and helped us up, sometimes many times.”

This Class Day, 189 MDs and 30 DMDs were conferred to the Class of 2007. Approximately half of the graduates were women and half men. Underrepresented minorities made up a quarter of the new graduates.

—Emily Lieberman

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