All the Light We May Fail to See: Learning from Talking to Strangers

It’s Spring in Virginia, and the senior medical students have gotten their Match results and are sending emails and texts thanking their mentors for the guidance and help provided in this final stage of their medical school trajectories. Their gratitude, of course, has reminded me of my own appreciation for those who advised, taught, and mentored me at similar points in my own trajectory. However, those recollections have also called to mind some other less traditional and, perhaps, underappreciated ‘mentors’ that I had the great fortune to encounter and to be influenced by. These thoughts have prompted me to reflect on my appreciation for these people who, especially in retrospect, helped me become a better doctor.