Video
Transcript
It is my pleasure to now introduce
the next Harvard Medical School 2023 speaker, Leen Al Kassab.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
For those of you who have not seen her featured
on Harvard’s Instagram feed, you may remember her
as Cannon’s birthday baker or more infamously
as the perpetrator of the Vandy 2019 kitchen fire.
[LAUGHTER]
Believe me when I say I was not amused at the time.
I still remember standing in the freezing cold when it was
negative 10 degrees outside.
But honestly, you can’t ever be that mad at Leen.
She’s one of the kindest people you will ever meet,
and I’m grateful to call her a close friend.
Leen is a member of the Pathways MD entering class of 2018,
taking a fifth year for research,
graduating today with the class of 2023.
Leen is originally from Damascus, Syria, and Sidon,
Lebanon, by way of Dubai, UAE, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
She moved to the US and graduated from Harvard College
in 2018 having studied molecular and cellular biology
with a secondary in global health and health policy.
She has been an integral student leader of the Arab community
on campus since and is a resident tutor
at the college’s Adams House.
Her passions lie at the intersection
of women’s health and refugee and immigrant health.
And she will soon be starting residency in obstetrics
and gynecology in the combined Brigham and Women’s
Massachusetts General Hospital program right here at Harvard.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Her remarks are entitled “Physician Ambassadors.”
Join me in welcoming Leen to the stage.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Good afternoon, everybody.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] It is a pleasure to be here and share
some reflections with you today.
Today is a special day for many reasons.
But it is extra special for me as some of you
may know because my father, who is a Syrian passport holder,
could not make it to my 2018 college graduation or my White
Coat Ceremony.
But thankfully, he is here today.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
He’s here alongside my incredible mother, my brother,
the best of lifelong friends, and classmates.
And I’m so grateful.
It is an honor to be a part of this day with all the families
and parents here, physically, virtually, and in spirits,
collectively celebrating our and truly your incredible milestone
and significant achievements, a culmination of over 10,
even 25 years of your guidance, support, patience,
and encouragement.
We thank you.
During my time at HMS, I took a research year
to work on an immigrant women’s health project.
And through many focus group discussions,
the concept of identity, the strength and empowerment
it brings, was so palpable.
I reflected on what cultural and religious identity meant to me,
how it empowers me and intersects with my identity as,
dare I say now, a physician.
After nine years in the US and on Harvard’s campus,
every time I see someone from my home region,
the first question I get is, how are you treated there?
Do you face any challenges because of your headscarf
or because you’re Arab?
Thought-provoking questions like this
did not only come from those far away.
During PCE, a clerkship director was checking in with me
about my experience with patients and faculty,
asking me the same question.
Later, during my residency interview trail,
noting that my personal statement
and extracurricular activities were all
relevant to my identity as an Arab Muslim woman,
an interviewer asked me, what make you–
what made you feel like you can so openly and unapologetically
be yourself?
Can be hard to quiet the noise as a busy medical student
and reflect on your own identity.
But I owed that reflection to myself and to those asking.
The question prompted me to wonder about the weight
of wearing my identity.
Is it burdensome to me, inconvenient to others?
The answer was never simple or concrete.
It was always so undeniably complex,
a composite of experiences, memories, stories,
and internalized perspectives, never simple,
much like identities.
I thought back to an experience I had at the Harvard Square
Homeless Shelter, where I was doing intake
with a guest who was getting an overnight bed, an experience
much similar to doing a new admission for a patient.
Next morning, he shared that someone on his Facebook feed
had made an Islamophobic post.
But this time, he took it upon himself to comment, saying,
you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You’ve never met a Muslim.
I met one last night, and she treated me
with more kindness than anyone.
I would have never thought that how
I interacted with this guest after a long night
of volunteering would be ingrained in his mind as what
Muslims are like.
I am grateful that I was able to present
a real-world manifestation of the values my identity is
founded upon and deconstruct misinformed assumptions
about it.
In recalling stories like this one,
I recognized that while no one ecosystem is perfect,
Harvard is a special place that respects
and promotes celebrating individual identities in all
its kinds.
And it was a privilege to be here
and to be a part of its community.
Throughout the years–
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Throughout the years, away from home
and from a decade-long civil war,
I have grown to recognize that with privilege comes power,
and with power comes responsibility.
And by virtue of us being here, we
have accepted that responsibility.
When I first got into Harvard, my uncle called me
[NON-ENGLISH],, which translates to ambassador.
He called me this to refer to the identity
I was to exemplify and represent in this new place.
There was so much pride, excitement, and pressure
in just one word.
I am not unique in holding an identity that
shapes my worldview and values.
Each one of us has their own beautifully crafted,
ever-evolving identity.
But perhaps one remarkable identity
we now share and visibly wear together is that of medicine.
In just two weeks, we will all be
wearing our big, bright badges that reads
MD or doctor or physician.
We will all be wearing our not short length white coats.
We will be carrying our stethoscopes, probably
not in surgery.
And we’ll probably be wearing our scrubs.
I think now is a good time to reflect on the responsibility,
power, and privilege that comes with carrying
the weight of hereon wearing your identity as a physician.
It is important to always think about
how, as physicians, our individual 15-minute
interactions with one patient may
have ripple effects on their future interactions
or lack thereof with health care systems and professionals
for themselves and their families
and for consequential decisions they make with regards
to their well-being.
We may have rough days.
We may experience burnout.
We may not be perfect.
And the identity of our profession
does not fall on one individual.
But as we celebrate the privilege of living out
our dream of becoming doctors, let
us remember to maintain the things we learned in POM.
Remember to nurture your empathy, your compassion,
your willingness to be an educator,
to check your assumptions and stigma, to advocate
for your patients and to go the extra mile.
Our interactions and care, no matter
how fleeting, are representative, ingrained,
and consequential to those we’ve dedicated
the last several years to and care most about, our patients.
The beauty of the duality in our profession
is that we are often both the scientist and the advocate,
the empathetic caretaker and the tough news-bearer,
the advisor and the listener, the entrusted teacher
and the lifelong student.
We are also the physician and the ambassador.
Graduating today from Harvard Medical School–
yes, take that in, we really did it–
we are each [NON-ENGLISH] or [NON-ENGLISH],,
ambassadors of both the identity we openly and unapologetically
carry as individuals and now our shared identity as physicians.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
If the white coat had an identity,
then our identity is humanity, wherever we may be.
May we all proudly wear our white coats
and take on our responsibility as ambassadors
of this profession.
Thank you.
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]