Cooper Ehlers, MD Candidate Georgetown University School of Medicine Class of 2021

Between lecture, the library, volunteering, and bed, days in medical school feel crowded. Once I start on the wards in a year, I will reflect on the relaxed days of my pre-clinical years. Afterwards as a resident, and later as a practicing physician, responsibilities will only continue to accumulate. I think of the mentor who told me that he had never tasted a sip of coffee during medical school, nor residency–and how that changed when his first child was born (and I think about my reliance on a cup of caffeine to get up to baseline every morning). Someday, I too will have to juggle my own health with my patients’ and my family’s. Every week in medical school, I am becoming convinced that preparing for clinical medicine is just as important as learning the skill of balance. I must start learning how to juggle personal and professional obligations now while they are “easy”. The habits that I am developing will foster or hinder the balance that I strive to have as a man, father and physician. My coach, Atsuko Horiguchi, is my training wheels.

I was skeptical about coaching. I was not sure how much I could gain from it. Like most medical students, I share in the blessing and in the curse of being simultaneously introspective and self-actuating. The combination helped me to at least get this far. Separately, I assumed “coaching” meant that someone would be telling me what to do. Instead, my coach enables my autocriticism to pull forth organic solutions. She enables me to get out of my own way, to recognize answers to problems, and then, importantly, to act. Whenever we meet, Atsuko pushes me to generate new, realistic goals for myself and resolve to reach them. These small revolutions forward are just the start of my journey in coaching, but it is an ebbing ride towards balance that will undoubtedly be worth taking.

Elizabeth Dente, MD Candidate Georgetown University School of Medicine Class of 2021

Aspiring medical students will sit for an MCAT exam, write medical school application essays, and cultivate a radiant college transcript through hours spent in a library. We accomplish these things solo, and they take us one step closer to our medical school dreams. But who are we once we get there?

The beginning of medical school can be compared to starting a new job as a trainee – but instead of being rated on perhaps our sales projections, we are appraised by our ability to care for another human being. Like any new trainee, we may feel underqualified. There are times we may question whether we deserve to be here at all. When it is the middle of the night and we are still at the library or the hospital, what is it that convinces us to keep going? Who will I, Elizabeth Dente, the future physician be, and is she destined to care for patients in need? My coach, Shelly Gehshan, helped me find an answer to that question. My personal values, my future goals, and the way I look at the world are what drive me to become a physician. Through Shelly’s motivation and tough questions, I see my strengths that I can contribute to the medical field.

What resonates most with me from my coaching experience is the knowledge that I am not alone. Not only do other medical students feel and think like me, but so do others who are beginning stressful careers of their own. This is a part of the journey. My coaching experience has given me not only the confidence and conviction to complete the journey, but the ability to truly enjoy it.

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