Year one, year two, year three, year four
Each year you learn a little more
Before graduating in four
Always yearning for more
Never appreciating what’s yours
The MD knocking on heaven’s door
Year one
You learn disease risk factors
Belying facts which pose as distractors
You’re losing
Track of individuals
Among the pack
Year two
You learn long lists of drugs
Discarding the very hugs
That prevented the depression tugging
Tugging at your lifeblood
Year three
You learn symptoms and signs
And how to place central lines
Cutting the emotional vines
That took time growing
Connecting through unknowing
Year four
You learn the meaning
Of the Hippocratic oath
Promising to do no harm
Despite unknowingly arming
Patients with hollow charms
And spiritual firearms
Inside an institution
That’s riddled with moral pollution
You must find a solution
Whether it be some kind of love
Or a higher power above
You must look outside yourself
Don’t forget the humanity left —
That you left on the bottom shelf
Or else you’ll become somebody else
A body without a self
A feeling that isn’t felt
A continent without a shelf
Who knows medicine and nothing else.
Contributing Writer
Drexel University College of Medicine
Jason Roley is a second-year medical student at Drexel University College of Medicine (’18) and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley (’12). He is interested in Addiction Psychiatry and passionate about working with vulnerable patient populations. Adventurous and open-minded, Jason not only enjoys an interdisciplinary approach to medicine but also life, emphasizing the mind body balance in every day living.