Do better.

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want but not what you need
When you feel so tired but you can't sleep

I am humbled every day: by patients, by patients' families, by doctors and nurses, by other students. In the face of illness and disease, there is so much information to retain with so little cranial space to contain it. I'm not used to feeling inadequate. But I do, daily. I thought that by the end of medical school, with the extra M.D. and M.P.H. letters behind my name, that I'd be this vessel of knowledge, or maybe a gourd of knowledge at least. (Gourd, I like that word). But perhaps the greatest lesson I'll leave Emory with in a few years is: I won't ever know all the answers. It'd be so much easier if the world was painted in only black & white, but where's the beauty in that? Gray, it's the new black.

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
I admit it. I've become a crier. I spent years of my childhood and adolescence bottling my emotions away and functioning as a tomboy independent hard-ass. All of that has been thrown out the window though. I am one of two regular tear-shedders during small group meetings. I often turn away during patient encounters to hide the welling tears. When it gets really bad, I feign the need to pee and bawl a bit in a bathroom stall. And now, I write if it gets to be too much. But I don't care. Emotions, they're also the new black.
I promise you I will learn from my mistakes
And I will try to fix you
I don't have any semblance of a "God complex." I recognize that I will make mistakes. I already have. I expect my bad days to get worst but also for my good days to get better. But ultimately, I expect this from myself:

DO BETTER.

-Coldplay's "Fix You"

p.s. Listen to the moving version of Coldplay's "Fix You" from the film Young@Heart

p.p.s. Don't be fooled. I may cry but I'm still an independent hard-ass ... only I'm in a dress these days.