Teacher or villain-elle?

Here comes another eager-eyed learner,
She stutters as her glasses begin to mist,
Wisdom or trauma: which will it be, Teacher?

Now with beaded sweat and shy demeanour,
She asks to examine the pulse at the wrist,
Here comes another eager-eyed learner.

With eyes now squinted, she deciphers the murmur,
Reveals– then jolted, by what she has missed,
Wisdom or trauma: which will it be, Teacher?

She never forgets that murmur for sure,
In fact, she becomes a cardiologist.
Here comes another eager-eyed learner,

In a spotless white coat, he steps up to answer
Then confidently gives the wrong diagnosis...
Wisdom or trauma: which will it be, Teacher?

"One day, you will get it. It will get easier.
I remember a time, I just had to persist."
Here comes another eager-eyed learner,
Wisdom, not trauma, was chosen by Teacher.

Note: This villanelle was written for one of my assignments at a poetry course. It is a 19-line poem with a strict rhyme scheme and structure. For those who are curious or want to try their hand at this, you can find out more at Villanelle | Academy of American Poets

Reflections

The great migration, otherwise known as "MO changeover", has just occurred at the start of July. (For those unfamiliar, MOs—medical officers—are junior doctors who rotate through hospitals as part of their training.) This inspired me to write about the cyclical nature of mentoring: how we beam with pride when the 'old' batch we trained takes their leave, while anxiously anticipating the incoming batch of MOs. It is a necessary and vital cycle of medical training.

It also made me reflect on what we pass down as mentors, and what we received in the past. Think for a moment about a time when you were the learner... what is one word to describe your experience? Leave a comment below. If we were to create a word cloud collectively, I am pretty sure it would include both positive and negative experiences.

In medical school where I studied overseas, there were mentors who believed that humiliation and shaming were instrumental to our learning. Apart from calling us 'walnut brains', my anatomy professor often raised his hands towards the heavens lamenting to God, "What have I done to deserve this?”. I guess the concept of psychological safety was not yet constructed at that time.

Thankfully, during my junior clinical years, I was blessed with many gifted mentors who were clinically astute and inspiring. Despite the hardships of training, the strong motivation to pursue palliative medicine and inspiring role models helped to form my professional identity.

As I started to become a mentor myself, I appreciated the fulfilment in medical education, but it also came with great accountability. I made many mistakes along the way – I still do. However, this poem reminds me that at every learning opportunity, we have a choice of what to pass down. Will it be wisdom or trauma? I hope I will choose wisdom, and along with that, kindness and patience. But for the times that I don't, I'll say to myself "One day, you will get it." Just persist. Mentors are learners too.

I hope this villanelle, with its repetitive rifts, takes you through each teachable moment, and gently prompts you to choose generational wisdom over trauma.

Jamie is a palliative care physician who believes she has the best job in the world — her work entails listening to untold stories of extraordinary lives. While this can be heavy and intense, poetry is her way of channeling these special encounters to better understand our common humanity. More of her work can be found here.