Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: imposter syndrome

  • Unmasked

    Kelley ZhaoStony Brook, New York, United States The lecture hall was freezing on the first day of medical school orientation. The room was buzzing with students meeting one another, and the familiar phrases floated around me as I took my seat. “Where are you from?” “Where did you go for college?” Half of the students…

  • Are we culturally tone-deaf?

    Clara KooNew York, United States The cultural norms of American medicine are speciously like those of traditional Korean culture, but the differences place Korean-American students at a disadvantage. When I began my third year of medical school, a fourth-year student advised, “Just do what you can do be useful.” If there is anything I know…

  • From here

    Rasa RafieColorado, United States In college, we were the top of our class, the winners of scholarships and awards, the leaders of campus organizations. We were the ones our classmates looked up to and the names our teachers used as examples. We worked hard and those efforts delivered results—good grades, MCAT scores, and finally medical…

  • Un-impostering

    Brianna RossiterPittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA We stood surrounding her tiny body in the hospital bed. Her shallow breaths were splinted by pain as we watched, myself and four second-year, male medical students. Her breath would catch and I wondered if she would disappear into the oblivion of the hospital matrix, her diseased bones and metastasized lungs…

  • Empathy for medical students

    David JeffreyEdinburgh, United Kingdom On a windy corner of Drummond Street, not far from Rutherford’s pub in Edinburgh, there is a small bronze plaque with these words: “And when I remembered all that I hoped and feared as I pickled about Rutherford’s in the rain and the east wind; how I feared I should be…