In This Special Graduation Issue:

Your Turn

• Readers Respond to Last Week's Reflection Prompt: What is your favorite quote?
• This Week's Reflection Prompt: If you were a baseball player, what would your walk up music be?



Upcoming Events/Announcements

• MedMoth Storytelling program receives grant from Charles E. Kubly Foundation
• New Academic Medicine Innovation Report: REACH: A Required Curriculum to Foster the Well-Being of Medical Students
• Wisconsin Medical Journal Seeks Applicants for Editor-in-Chief
• Register for May Kaleidoscope: Multi-Generational Workplace: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities 
• Register for The Doctor as a Humanist DASH 6th Symposium: Humanism in Surgery
• Academic Medicine Call for Papers
• KICS Journal Club with Dr. Margaret Chisolm
• RSVP for the KINETIC³ Graduation Celebration

Goodbye 

By Michael Esson

This is not goodbye,

no tears will be shed,

no parting words will be said,

no whispers of you will be heard,

and no pain will be felt.

You arrived yesterday, it seems

In your eyes, an innocent gleam,

And today, here you are packing up your dreams,

Picking up all the pieces, which still looks new.

You are not the same person I once knew,

In a hurry, time flew

Leaving me with fading memories of you.

Maybe this is goodbye,

And I’m just bad at it,

You’ve left me all out of sorts,

So, bear with me while I reminisce,

In my eyes, tears cloud my thoughts,

So, excuse me if I ramble a bit.

This is not goodbye,

If it were, it would sound like this.

You were so young and naïve,

The smiles we shared, came with such ease,

Although it pains me to see you leave,

I rejoice having known you, so please

Don’t forget me, not in the least.

When your journey gets too much to bear,

Rest your weary head,

And have no fear,

   this is not goodbye.

Gaudeamus Igitur

by John Stone

For this is the day of joy

      which has been fourteen hundred and sixty days in coming

      and fourteen hundred and fifty-nine nights

For today in the breathing name of Brahms

      and the cat of Christopher Smart

      through the unbroken line of language and all the nouns

      stored in the angular gyrus

      today is a commencing

For this is the day you know too little

      against the day when you will know too much

For you will be invincible

      and vulnerable in the same breath

      which is the breath of your patients

For their breath is our breathing and our reason

For the patient will know the answer

      and you will ask him

      ask her

For the family may know the answer

For there may be no answer

      and you will know too little again

      or there will be an answer and you will know too much

      forever

For you will look smart and feel ignorant

      and the patient will not know which day it is for you

      and you will pretend to be smart out of ignorance

For you must fear ignorance more than cyanosis

For whole days will move in the direction of rain

For you will cry and there will be no one to talk to

      or no one but yourself

For you will be lonely

For you will be alone

For there is a difference

For there is no seriousness like joy

For there is no joy like seriousness

For the days will run together in gallops and the years

      go by as fast as the speed of thought

      which is faster than the speed of light

      or Superman

      or Superwoman

For you will not be Superman

For you will not be Superwoman

For you will not be Solomon

      but you will be asked the question nevertheless **

For after you learn what to do, how and when to do it

      the question will be whether

For there will be addictions: whiskey, tobacco, love

For they will be difficult to cure

For you yourself will pass the kidney stone of pain

      and be joyful

For this is the end of examinations

For this is the beginning of testing

For Death will give the final examination

      and everyone will pass

For the sun is always right on time

      and even that may be reason for a kind of joy

For there are all kinds of

      all degrees of joy

For love is the highest joy

For which reason the best hospital is a house of joy

      even with rooms of pain and loss

      exits of misunderstanding

For there is the mortar of faith

For it helps to believe

For Mozart can heal and no one knows where he is buried

For penicillin can heal

      and the word

      and the knife

For the placebo will work and you will think you know why

For the placebo will have side effects and you will know

      you do not know why

For none of these may heal

For joy is nothing if not mysterious

For your patients will test you for spleen

      and for the four humors

For they will know the answer

For they have the disease

For disease will peer up over the hedge

      of health, with only its eyes showing

For the T waves will be peaked and you will not know why

For there will be computers

For there will be hard data and they will be hard

      to understand

For the trivial will trap you and the important escape you

For the Committee will be unable to resolve the question

For there will be the arts

      and some will call them

      soft data

      whereas in fact they are the hard data

      by which our lives are lived

For everyone comes to the arts too late

For you can be trained to listen only for the oboe

      out of the whole orchestra

For you may need to strain to hear the voice of the patient

      in the thin reed of his crying

For you will learn to see most acutely out of

      the corner of your eye

      to hear best with your inner ear

For there are late signs and early signs

For the patient's story will come to you

      like hunger, like thirst

For you will know the answer

      like second nature, like first

For the patient will live

      and you will try to understand

For you will be amazed

      or the patient will not live

      and you will try to understand

For you will be baffled

For you will try to explain both, either, to the family

For there will be laying on of hands

      and the letting go

For love is what death would always intend if it had the choice

For the fever will drop, the bone remold along

its lines of force

      the speech return

      the mind remember itself

For there will be days of joy

For there will be elevators of elation

      and you will walk triumphantly

      in purest joy

      along the halls of the hospital

      and say Yes to all the dark corners

      where no one is listening

For the heart will lead

For the head will explain

      but the final common pathway is the heart

      whatever kingdom may come

For what matters finally is how the human spirit is spent

For this is the day of joy

For this is the morning to rejoice

For this is the beginning

      Therefore, let us rejoice

      Gaudeamus igitur.

* Therefore, let us rejoice

** 1 Kings 3:16-27

John Stone is a cardiologist and poet at Emory University School of Medicine. His work appears in five books of his own; he is also co-editor of On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays, an anthology of literature and medicine that has been given to all American medical students by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation since 1991. Music from Apartment 8: New and Selected Poems, will be published by LSU Press in 2004.

Readers respond to last week's reflection prompt:

What is your favorite quote?



Theodore Roosevelt:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

—Lindsey McAlarnen, MD

Pablo Picasso:

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

—Cassandra L. Wright, Staff

Sam Glenn:

"A sign you have a positive workplace culture is laughter. Just listen to how much laughter there is where you work. Laughter is a very good sign of positivity. You can work hard and still laugh and enjoy your workday more."

—Cheryl Knapp, Staff

JRR Tolkien:

"Not all those who wander are lost."

—Tammy Hosch, Staff

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

—Tammy Hosch, Staff

New Academic Medicine Innovation Report

MedMoth Storytelling program receives grant

Congratulations to the MedMoth Storytelling program for receiving a grant from the Charles E. Kubly Foundation.

New Academic Medicine Innovation Report

REACH: A Required Curriculum to Foster the Well-Being of Medical Students

In this Academic Medicine Innovation Report, Drs. Cassie Ferguson, Tavinder Ark and Adina Kalet of the Kern Institute describe the REACH curriculum (Recognize, Empathize, Allow, Care, Hold each other up), a required, longitudinal well-being curriculum for first- and second-year medical students at the Medical College of Wisconsin designed to prepare them for the emotional life of being a physician. 

May Kaleidoscope Forum

Multi-Generational Workplace: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities

Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, Millennials and Gen Zers oh my! We are currently in a unique position where we could have as many as five generations working in one workplace at the same time. How do you effectively communicate across the board to each group?

Please join us as we explore and identify what motivates each group, best approaches to communicate and engage, and discuss how each generation best gives and receives information. 

May 19, 2022

Virtual via Zoom

12:00 - 1:00 pm CT

Academic Medicine Call For Papers

Academic Medicine is seeking original submissions for their Letters to the Editor feature from medical students, residents, fellows, and trainees in other health professions on the topic of a transformative moment in your professional journey.

The editors will be looking for letters that go beyond describing an event to reflect meaningfully on how the experience affected your professional identity formation. In other words, a successful letter will not simply tell us what happened, but will also illuminate the role of that experience in shaping your identity as a health care professional. We expect you to use your personal experience to illustrate the point, but the purpose of the letter should be to communicate a broader issue or idea that has relevance for others throughout academic medicine. Submissions that are strictly narrative will not be considered for publication. Authors wishing to submit a strictly narrative piece should explore the journal’s Teaching and Learning Moments feature as an option.

Submissions will be accepted between 5/23/2022 and 5/27/22 only.

Please Join Us

KINETIC³ Graduation Celebration

Please join the live (via Zoom) KINETIC³ Graduation Celebration as we recognize the contributions and accomplishments of these outstanding educators who successfully completed either the Excellence in Teaching or Medical Education Research Tracks

This celebration will highlight the graduates' character, caring, and curiosity through:

• Teaching Pearls and Words of Wisdom provided by the Excellence in Teaching Track 
• Scholarly work and Research Outcomes provided by the Medical Education Researcher Track 

We hope you will join us to recognize these outstanding accomplishments!

June 8, 2022

via Zoom

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm CT