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The first day of medical school was...anti-climactic. Caught in the torrent of "newness" – new car, new computer, new apartment, new furniture – I was ready to begin my new intellectual life. Instead, the day was spent in a trench of housekeeping details, all of which were succinctly summed up in the phrase, "All of which is on our website." Why, then, go into such minute details about student A's preference for gym hours if your policies and procedures are already in place? Or the endless Powerpoint presentations on your endless opportunities for community service which are, in fact, too long to be read in the moment or out loud? Friendliness.

The school's administration bifurcates itself into the men and the women. The men tackle the serious issues of your intellectual life while the actual daily administration - bursar, registrar, intercessor - are peopled by friendly, smoky-voiced women whose clothing choices descend from 1980's power suit to ill-fitting pants based upon the seniority of their position. I was struck by how each presentation was concluded with the earnest plea, "Help us to help you. We'd love to." And therein lies the friendliness. Getting a parking permit was a nightmare, compounded by multiple incompetencies, yet perpetrated with such friendliness as to soothe the frustration. You simply cannot get angry here as everyone wants the best for you. Gone are the days of, "You're smart enough to get in here, you're smart enough to figure it out." How lovely!

Name badge? Check. Parking pass? Check. Identity verification? Check. Security presentation? Check. Reimbursement check? Check...And at the end of the day as the goal of becoming a doctor slipped further from my grasp with each new detail of how to live your life as an independent student-adult, the moment happened. Past the surgical specimen drop-off window, and the blood sample lab, a gurney, a black body obscured in a tangle of white sheets, two orderlies in a blur of green, and a prison guard. A prisoner, hand-cuffed, on his way from X-Ray to diagnosis to I-wish-rehabilitation. And in that moment I imagined the shame I would have felt on that bed, not only a patient in public with a flimsy gossamer of hospital sheet protecting my form, but a prisoner. A rotten apple. Truthfully, I imagined the shame the prisoner felt before correcting myself that even a doctor has access to only one person's thoughts - their own. And my liberal heart blinded me to past crimes and deserved punishment and all I could see was inescapable, warrantless shame. The shame of being a public patient. And in that shame that patient became me, because it was my shame, and his crimes were absolved and I would heal him. One day.

So that is medicine and why I am here. That moment is the one you live for, because medicine is not about the healing, or the power, or the caring. In the patient, whom you can neither choose nor refuse, you can only see the good. I chose medicine because I could go on believing that everyone was good.