It was time to attend commencement again, to watch the conferral of a
master's upon my daughter. And this year, there was a novelty:
a witty brief address from an erstwhile student - and the content, both
amusing and insightful.
This is how Mark Puder's speech went
(he's a cutter instructor at Harvard)
"I wondered initially how I would fill this
two hour speech.... - just kidding: 10 minutes"
"Here's some serious advice:
[Pass out the paper and pencils to take notes]
1) phone Mom /comma/ often.
2) Spend time with the people you love.
The rest will fall into place."
He also mentioned his early resistance to dosing terminal cancer patients with
toxic agents - and he is now developing the means (he hopes) to stabilize
some cancers - so that progressive diseases step down to merely chronic
status. He mentioned in passing, the need to operate on 1 pound babies,
from time to time.
The President's introduction was also interesting in this respect: he said
(and remember this is a small state university in a smallish Texas town
MSU at Wichita Falls) "We have commended several hundred students to
various medical schools - and we have received 100% acceptance - but
those who apply, have to obtain our approval first..."
This seemed surprising - until I realised the social service aspect of
medicine:
small towns must produce their own physician candidates - big town physicians
won't serve; the traffic runs the other way.