Recently I had the honor and pleasure of being inducted into my school's chapter of Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical academic honor society. It was a goal of mine for a long time, one that I was sometimes scared to say I had in case it just didn't pan out. Being invited to apply and accepted was truly one of the biggest honors I've achieved so far in medical school. For our induction, the other fifteen student inductees in my class and I were invited to attend a nice banquet at the Ohio Union with many of the faculty and higher-ups from the med center. One of the best moments of the night was when Patti Fertel, our beloved but recently retired college of medicine counselor came up to our table to congratulate us. As she left, she added one last piece of congratulations: "and way to go, GIRLS!" This was in reference to the fact that more than half of the inductees were young women. I felt myself smiling and thinking, yeah! Go us!
But later I kept thinking about it. Why shouldn't we expect this of ourselves? Throughout my training so far, I've met and been taught by some very intelligent, inspiring women. It's fantastic that we, as future female doctors, aren't afraid to be smart, driven and competitive. No one would act surprised if the inductees had been mostly men; we need to have high expectations for ourselves as well. Now more than ever, in our current political idiocracy, where pregnancy is somehow being legally defined as beginning two weeks before it conception even occurs we need strong, smart, opinionated female physicians to stand up for our patients, our sex, and for ourselves. Let's give the ultra-conservative religious right something to fear. Let's hear it for the girls.
