Graduation Day 1999
On a June afternoon in Ann Arbor, a sunny day as beautiful
as might have been dreamed of by the most optimistic of events
planners, the 1999 senior class of the University of Michigan
Medical School assembled in Hill Auditorium for their last and
most triumphant gathering—their graduation. The assembled
students, 169 strong, walked across the stage of Hill Auditorium,
resplendent in their robes and hoods, trimmed in the traditional
dark green velvet (the color of healing herbs) which has been
the faculty color for medicine since the late 19th century,
to receive their Doctoris in arte medica diplomas and pledged,
by their recitation of the ancient Hippocratic Oath, to practice
“uprightness and honor” in their profession.
The ceremony was convened by Nancy E. Cantor, Ph.D., provost
and executive vice president for academic affairs, and Gilbert
S. Omenn, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president for medical
affairs, introduced honored guests. Dean Allen Lichter (M.D.
1972) presided over the ceremony, and described to the students,
based on his own experience as an alumnus, what their Michigan
medical degrees would mean to them: “After this day, nothing
will be the same. On this day you are joining more than 16,000
graduates of the University of Michigan Medical School. When
you meet them there will be an immediate bond of understanding
between you.”
The students’ fellow graduate Gerami Seitzman, who began
her academic life thinking she wanted to be on the stage and
who did improvisational theater in Chicago, represented the
class with a theatrical reflection on their years together in
her speech, “This Won’t Hurt, But You May Feel Some
Pressure,” recalling via her carefully constructed “plot,”
memorable moments that she and her fellow students, sustained
by pizzas, then saltines and graham crackers, experienced on
their arduous but poorly fed journey to medical knowledge.
In his commencement address, “Physician, Heal Thyself,”
Johns Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon Benjamin S. Carson Sr.
(M.D. 1977) described his path from a poor childhood in Detroit
to the great satisfactions of his highly successful medical
career, and the hospital public address system (“Dr. Jones,
Dr. Jones to the OR”) that had inspired him to become a
doctor. (“Now they have beepers, so I never do get to hear
my name broadcast in that way, but the dream was wonderful,”
he said.) He did an impressive riff on the extraordinary complexity
of the human brain, but reminded the graduates that science
isn’t everything — that “those little caring
moments” between a physician and a patient can make all
the difference. He ended his lecture on a spiritual note, suggesting
that the graduates not leave God out of their thoughts (“If
it’s in our constitution, and our pledge of allegiance
and our courts and on our money, and we can’t talk about
it, what is that?”)
Graduates’ residency specialties will be as follows: internal
medicine, 33; family medicine, 24; pediatrics, 15; obstetrics
and gynecology, 10; general surgery, 8; medicine/pediatrics,
8; ophthalmology, 7; radiology-diagnostic, 7; anesthesiology,
6; emergency medicine, 6; psychiatry, 6; orthopaedic surgery,
5; otolaryngology, 4; dermatology, 3; neurology, 3; neurosurgery,
3; preliminary surgery, 3; medicine preliminary, 2; pathology,
2; plastic surgery, 2; radiation oncology, 2.
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