Temple University School of Medicine - Skull Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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On the Elusiveness of a Dream... I remember having a thought, quite a long time ago, that seems to have persevered inside a then light and careless mind - an accidental thought that popped inside a city of thoughts, where thoughts came and went as they pleased without regard for meaning. I may have been in college at the time, lazily sprawled on a dorm room floor eating extra-cheese pizza with cheese fries and Sprite. Or maybe the thought appeared earlier, sneaking into my head amidst a perfect school recess of kickball or dodgeball or wiffleball or tag. 1 really can’t be sure. But this thought got me thinking, and once 1 got thinking, it grew stronger, more intense, and more real. It transformed from a thought to an idea... to a concept... to a goal... to a plan. It is the thought that drove me to where I am today. Yet it eludes me. I cannot grasp it. But it stubbornly stays, ever so delicately, floating somewhere in the hazy dawn of my semi-conscious. I semi-see it, its semi-clarity taunting my perfectionist side until overcome with serious frustration. This explains why I have arrived here, to this page, at this juncture in a thus far turbulent life. It is another attempt to define the avid motivation which has led me along a path that some would say is the steepest, the most challenging path of all. But the thought that became a plan that became a journey remains undefined. So I’ll step back to a time before the thought, to the motives and intentions that inspired its creation. In essence, it was born from a desire to understand, in the broadest sense that the word can be used in the application to life. Life begins without an awareness of a desire to understand, only baby pictures of searching eyes and exploring hands that want to understand. Stories of innocent questions and intriguing curiosity born from a need to understand. And thus we learn. And we learn. And we learn. And with each new day of learning comes a new and more profound understanding of how little we understand. But this only fans the flames of our determination to reach the end of an endless journey to find a meaning in a life that is so much more than us. So we search. And in this world, few seekers search with the passion and zeal of us doctors. We listen and absorb, read and study, diligently deciphering ideas, some so ingrained as to have become medical law, others so untouched as to be little more than science fiction. Always hungry and never content, we lunge forward on this path of life because we are determined to carry out our plan, to reach our goal, to discover why this thought has compelled such passion. This path concludes with the peace of understanding, but inevitably (and naturally), the end appears more distant with each leap forward. The thought, born from a desire to understand, sweetened by our successes and salted by our sweat and tears, is now no more than a hazy dream, a wistful fantasy of a finality that does not exist. The elusiveness of a dream provides the distinction for the word, the life, the attitude of doctor. While the rest of the world may submit to the futility of the struggle and lay complacent and comfortable, doctors will continue the search in spite of the pain, in spite of the frustrations, and in spite of the expanse that grows between progress and understanding. We began upon this journey because of a thought within us all that seemed so very attainable despite the lack of knowledge to back up the claim. Now we have more knowledge than we could have imagined, and yet the thought has become merely a dream. But we continue the search. This is what makes us doctors. Scott Fredd, M.D. 2OCX Skull 1 7

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AFFILIATE HOSPITALS cSt medical centers Abington Memorial Hospital Abington, PA Reading Hospital and Medical Center Reading, PA 16 Temple University School of Medicine

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The Class of 200d would like to Support Staff at Temple Student Health Services: Thank you for taking care of us when we were sick 3nd reassuring us that we weren’t the first students to diagnose ourselves with each new disease we learned about. Maintenance Staff: Thank you for picking up after us and for never yelling at us, even though we could never seem to find the trash cans and even if we did, we left 20 empty pizza boxes along with plates, napkins, empty z-litcr bottles... you get the idea. Bookstore staff: Thank you for knowing which books we needed even when we didn’t and for always asking if we wanted a soda or bag of chips to go with our purchases. 18 Temple University School of Medicine