Graduating

During the intervening period between final results and graduation, it will not surprise the reader to learn that there was a fair bit of calling each other Dr X, Y or Z. Indeed some rather less flattering suffixes were used in reference to antics which best remain undisclosed.

However, for me it was only on graduation day, when it becomes official, legal and proper, that the knowledge of actually being a doctor started to sink in. During the ceremony itself, the pomp and sense of occasion failed to make much of an impression. It was over the following hours, glimpsing myself through the eyes of parents and grandparents, that it slowly dawned on me: the sense of personal responsibility, the weight of lay expectation of what a doctor is, what he should know and be able to do.

For me, the last year has not so much been about getting to the point where the medical school was happy with my level of skill and knowledge as to that at which I was. The former is a bare minimum; the latter is what is required in order to begin any working day with a clear conscience. (Of course, the goal is to end each day with one, but this is rather predicated on starting as one means to go on. No doubt there will be plenty of room over the coming months to reflect on what is at times the unbridgable gap between one's own best and the patient's - and these are perhaps the moments where it is most vital to feel that one really did bring one's utmost to the table.)

As far as this goes though, prior to graduation I did actually feel I had got to this point: I have worked hard over the last year and I worked hard for finals. But standing there, degree(s) in hand, the fearsome realisation dawned on me that this piece of paper, this title - which ostensibly means so much - is worth absolutely nothing more than what remains in the head and in the heart: ultimately one carries nothing more into the ward, operating theatre or consulting room. Underneath our degrees, robes and titles, we are naked.