I've never been a valedictorian, nor have I ever had to truly say farewell. I've been involved in a long love/hate relationship with Cincinnati. Tomorrow I will graduate magna cum laude from the University of Cincinnati with a bachelors degree in biomedical engineering at Fifth Third Arena. Four years ago, I was wearing the same black cap and gown at the same arena (it was called the Schumacher Center at the time) as I participated in my high school commencement. Four years from now, I will most likely return to Fifth Third Arena, unless another sponsor buys its naming rights, to receive my medical degree from the University of Cincinnati.
I remember during freshman orientation, I was reading the News Record newspaper at UC, and there was a section where UC students were asked to give advice to incoming freshmen. One student was candid enough to say, "Don't come here." That same day, I remember watching an informational slideshow which concluded with a statement along the lines, "UC is what you make of it." During that transitional period, I constantly asked myself how I thought the next four years would be. I was confident that I'd be heavily involved in studying and doing lab research and that I had a future career in medicine. I'd ask myself if I thought that I'd be in Cincinnati the rest of my life, and would leave the question unanswered because of uncertainty.
So today, as I experience this deja vu, I again am asking myself if I'll be in Cincinnati four years from now. Will I constantly wish that I were in sunny SoCal rather than in my apartment on Eden Avenue? Will the huge workload of medical school crush my soul and burn me out? Will I let the naysayers get to me and kill my ambition? I hope that the answer to all of these questions is no, but again, I can't be certain what the next four years in Cincinnati will bring. I don't know what type of physician I will become, nor do I really know what to expect in medical school, but I am certain of one thing: if I can say that I made a difference, then I will have no regrets about the past nor fears about the future.
