Note: This article contains language about physical assault that could be upsetting to some readers.

Stanford Medical School saved my life. Not in the metaphorical way, but in a very literal way. If I didn’t start medical school when I did, there is a high chance I wouldn’t be alive today.

I struggled writing this piece because only a small handful of people know my story. By the time you’re done reading …

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Recently, I had the honor of standing by one of my childhood best friends as she promised the love of her life that she’d stand by him forever. The wedding was beautiful, and at the reception, I played with another close friend’s 3-year-old daughter and talked with other friends about their work promotions and apartment searches. All I have to contribute to these conversations are anecdotes about medical school and …

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One of the best bits of wisdom I’ve ever received is that you can tell a lot about someone by looking at how they spend their time. In medical school, time is our scarcest resource. We’re at this strange and exciting point in our lives, during which we’re responsible for learning an enormous amount of information in hopes that someday we’ll be able to quite literally save lives.

Many of my …

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Congratulations on your acceptance to medical school! Wherever you’re starting this fall, know that you’re joining a “cult” of health care professionals and health care professionals-to-be. No matter how little you know, you’ll be asked for medical advice. And the more you learn, the less likely you’ll be able to sit through an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” without picking out the make believe. We’re right there with you.

Medical school is a …

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This quarter, during the block of our human health and disease course dedicated to learning about the pulmonary system, I conducted one of the scariest “academic experiments” of my life: I stopped going to class.

What did she do with all that free time? one might be wondering. Instead of spending hours every week watching the lectures I missed going to in person and reading textbooks (I saved all of that …

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Back in September, an Inside Stanford Medicine article featured my first-year medical school class on our first day of anatomy. It spoke of learning anatomy and having the privilege to work on real donors’ bodies as a “rite of passage,” something all medical students must do to really discover the human body.

We were all very excited, yet timid, on that first day of anatomy class, I remember. Afraid …

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