Source: https://medicine.nus.edu.sg/white-coat-ceremony-2019/ Copyright: © 2019 Koh Zhi Kai
This speech was originally delivered to the NUS Medicine Class of 2025 by the 73rd NUS Medical Society President, Ms Caitlin Alsandria O'Hara, on 13 March 2022, Sunday, for the NUS Medicine White Coat Ceremony 2022
73rd NUS MedSoc President - Caitlin Alsandria O'Hara
A very good afternoon/evening to our Guest of Honour Dr Kanwaljit Soin, Dean: Professor Chong Yap Seng, Vice-Deans: Professor Lau Tang Ching and Professor Marion Aw, distinguished guests and professors, family members and loved ones, and to the class of 2026,
My heartiest congratulations to you, for being presented your white coats today. I know your cohort was our school’s second batch of students to begin medical school amidst an unforgiving pandemic, and that you’ve already been wearing your white coats steadily to your Patient Based Programme and histology lessons for the past academic year prior. Still, I hope there is in you a sense of pride and joy today; as this occasion is indeed one to celebrate.
My name is Caitlin, and I’m the 73rd president of the NUS Medical Society. To be able to address you today is a great honour, but also a source of great confusion—what could or should I possibly say? And so… just like every other Gen Z person would do, I took my confusion to the internet.
So I scrolled through listicles of good tips on speech-writing, and eventually found my way back to one of my favourite speeches: a speech delivered by Mr David Foster Wallace in 2005 at a commencement ceremony in a liberal arts college in America. Allow me to share a story he told.
‘There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, “What the heck is water?”.’
As Mr Wallace continues in his speech, ‘The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.’ One year into medical school, and you may already have been sucked into it and operating on autopilot—I know I sure did when I was in this phase of my schooling a few years back.
Traditionally, this White Coat Ceremony speech would be something you hear when on the cusp of your newly beginning medical education. The MedSoc president would talk to you about not losing that spark which got you into medical school in the first place, even as you navigate your way through the next 5-6 years here.
I initially thought I had a harder job, by addressing you all after 7 months in. But in some senses, I think a space for reflection is especially important, at a time as mundane as this: after your third continual assessment, before your first professional exams, far from the start of m1 yet not quite at the end of it, and also not exactly at the start of your clinical years just like your m2 seniors who had their white coat ceremony yesterday.
Allow me today to share 3 obvious, important realities that I have found difficult to see and talk about, as I’ve journeyed slowly but surely through medical school so far. I hope you pick up a thing or two from these little stories.
The first is that you have a reason to be here—reasons, in fact. I did my first night shift at the emergency department about 3 months ago. That night and the day before, I witnessed a few difficult scenes: an elderly patient whom my friends and I assisted in the resuscitation of eventually passed away, I met a teenage patient who had been sexually assaulted, and a patient I was attending to yelled and cried in distress into my scrubs because she was experiencing severe chronic pain. I felt overwhelmed by the mix of emotions that these encounters brought me: a sense of uncomfortable familiarity as these patients reminded me of past experiences or people I knew, a sense of helplessness at not being able to do more, a sense of despair as a fellow human being witnessing severe emotional and physical pain, and a sense of doubt about whether I was cut out for this job.
I spoke to my supervisor, Prof Malcolm, about how I felt like I was not able to handle the emotional load of a career in medicine. There may be or already have been similar points in your time in medical school where you feel like you shouldn’t be here. This was just one of them for me, among others including a sense of loneliness I felt especially in my first year of school, a sense of inadequacy when I did poorly for an assessment in M3. Prof reminded me of some truths I found hard to keep in mind yet again: that there was indeed something I could offer to medicine both now and in the future, and that I had my own convictions to be here, just as we all do. Our weaknesses are often our strengths taken too far—just as I felt overwhelmed emotionally by the patients I encountered, it was also a strength of mine that I had the capacity to empathise deeply in the first place. Learning the balance between empathy and distance was something I could and would do in the years ahead. Similarly, my inability to nurture close friendships in M1 was underpinned by a sincere longing for deep connection, and paved the way for meaningful relationships in my later years in school. Doing badly for my M3 test and feeling defeated was underscored by a resolve to be and become a better student. Sometimes, we just need to give our weaknesses and doubts some time, and notice in them our strengths and reasons to be where we are.
This sense of struggle takes me to the next truth that I have found easy to forget: that struggle is inevitable, but surmountable if you let it be. It sounds cliché for sure, but it is probably equally true. In late 2020, I lost a friend who was very close and dear to me and those who knew him. This loss was one that shook me to my very core. A few things got and continue to get me through: the way my M5 friend, Xiang Lin, took the bus over to my home after clinicals to sit with me for the rest of the day after I heard the news; the way she and others supported me to get some extra help to work through the grief; the way my CG mate Ying Ying sent over her notes from the lectures I simply could not focus in during that week of home-based learning.
I am naming my friends in medical school who support me precisely because it took me a long time, and I am still learning, to be vulnerable with the people I get to know here—as goes the phrase we hear too often, they are indeed my ‘future colleagues’. Collectively among my closer communities of friends, we have encountered difficulties—but we have helped one another through them, and only because we have allowed one another in. Finding others you can trust is not easy especially with the way your medical school experience has been stripped of its social components, down to its essentials, but I am sure you can find a way to find your people. In the meantime, there are avenues of support around for you (myself included in my capacity in MedSoc). I do not mean to shift the onus of getting better to one who is unwell, but rather, to shift the locus of power to you to allow yourself to receive the support you need. There is no shame, but rather great normalcy, in struggle.
The last truth that I easily neglect is that there is more to each of us than our identities in medicine. Those of you living in halls or residential colleges would be well-familiar with the stereotype of medical students as the most detached members of the NUS student community. Perhaps you’ve begun fitting in with that stereotype already too. While the time and effort we invest into our education and training is high and commendable, always remember that you are so much more too.
I was thrilled to find out that Dr Soin was our guest-of-honour today, as she was one of the founding members of AWARE, a civil society organisation advancing gender equality in Singapore, and the first female nominated member of parliament. Of course we aren’t all going to become NMPs and start organisations, but there is so much we can do, and there is so, so much to be done.
Being a good medical student is far from mutually exclusive with being a good member of the family, friend group, civil society, and other communities you are part of. While you pore through your notes in preparation for the many exams you’ll sit for and the ward rounds you’ll start to attend sooner than you think, don’t forget to immerse yourself in other forms of literature, other disciplines, other social causes, interests, and pursuits.
I shall not drone on and on and belabour the point, but I hope these three pointers impart a little something to you today too—these are things I personally find difficult to address or call to mind, despite how simply true they are. For all I know, these statements may not resonate at all with you, and that’s okay too. But today, I would encourage you to think of how you’d answer this question for yourself: what obvious, important reality do you want to remember, see and talk about? Today when you get home, consider writing these statements down on a piece of paper, or on your notes app, or pin it as a message on a private Telegram chat with yourself as I often do. There will be times in the months and years ahead where you lose yourself in the mundane day in and day out, and you will no doubt change in ways—both better and perhaps worse, to the point that you forget some of the most simple but important things. But I urge you to try your best to hold these truths close to your heart especially when it is easiest and most tempting to neglect them.
I thank you for letting me share this with you today, and I wish you a fruitful time ahead.
