You wouldn’t have been able to tell by looking at me, but I was probably the most overeager person at the inaugural concert of the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra in December 2016. The performance was held on the eve of my first day as editor of Penn Medicine magazine. But before my official new employee orientation day I’d created a custom curriculum for myself. It started with reading six years of back issues of the magazine and a small stack of books about the editor’s craft, and it culminated in that afternoon at Irvine Auditorium, swathed in sound.
I only learned later that two of the items on my unofficial orientation agenda had a connection: Gina Chang. Gina was not just one among a group of medical students who my predecessor, John Shea, profiled in this magazine’s pages in the fall of 2015 as they were beginning medical school. She was also someone who had gone on to become a co-founder of the orchestra and its principal cellist. I would soon get to know Gina and several of her classmates from John’s 2015 story, as my colleagues and I began work on what became this issue’s cover story.
“The Path Through Penn Medicine” was a years-long process, not just for the medical students who lived that four-year journey through medical school, but also for those of us who got to know them for the piece. We started following up with students again to work toward this sequel story when they were in their second year, not long after that first orchestra concert. At that time, we solicited their recollections of their first year while they were relatively fresh. Thereafter, we checked in every few months to capture their life events and their aspirations, frustrations, and interests as they unfolded. We wanted to hear what they had to say in the moment, and ultimately to convey the experience in their voices. Sometimes hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes it smooths out too much of your view of the twists and bends, the rise and fall, of the path behind you. We wanted to glimpse as much of the real journey as we could, and you’ll see those in-the-moment reflections represented in the present-tense storytelling throughout the piece. (Attentive readers will also note that they caught some glimpses along the way already, as we shared periodic updates on some of the students annually on the Penn Medicine News Blog and, in brief, here in the magazine.)
Becoming the professional you dreamed you’d become is one of the most essential aspects of coming of age—a theme that makes more than one appearance in this issue. The 18-years-running Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort study makes its own kind of coming-of-age tale for epidemiological research, worth diving into here. The phenomenon of continued maturation and evolution is also evident in the feature story about the emergence of new leadership training needs in academic medicine, and in this issue’s parting thoughts from Suzanne Rose, MD, MSEd, looking ahead to the future of medical education just over a year into her tenure as senior vice dean for medical education.
Just before this issue went to press, Irvine Auditorium once again swelled with sound at the Penn Med Symphony Orchestra’s Spring 2019 concert. The group has not only performed twice each year since its launch two and a half years ago, but it has grown to include medical professionals and students from a number of other medical centers in the city and region. The orchestra’s maturation and growth is a fitting analog to the experiences of the students you’ll learn more about in this issue. I hope you enjoy sharing in their journey.