Reader Responses to Build Your Own MD

I was fascinated to read about the dozen students who pioneered Brown’s new medical school. Like past articles in BAM, it well describes the atmosphere and philosophy of inquiry, innovation, caring, and commitment that seems to characterize medical education at Brown. The irony is this: I was an undergraduate at Brown in 1975 when these first MDs graduated. I was a proud explorer of the New Curriculum, majoring in biology and English, a writer for the BDH, teaching and traveling during a year off from college, committed to social action, but also a pre-med student. At the time, all of us pre-meds had to be interviewed by the pre-med dean. When he asked me why I wanted to be a doctor, I replied “To serve people.” He answered “Well, why don’t you be a waiter?” I hope this snide attitude is long gone and that the attitude towards pre-meds at Brown mirrors the tone of its medical school. In the meantime, my impetus for becoming a doctor has kept me going through the unimaginable turmoil of the COVID pandemic while hundreds of thousands of others have quit. And it’s led me to be a good tipper in restaurants as well.

What a thrill to see again the faces of Brown’s first medical graduates, familiar to me from 50 years ago. As students’ primary contact for medical school admissions, financial aid, and curricular issues from 1972-76, I got to know each of the small early classes quite well. Augmenting my daily work with them, I also studied their short- and long-term perspectives about medicine for my Brown master’s thesis in sociology—useful to the first dean, Dr. Aronson. Serving and learning from those first four classes of students in so many capacities supplied me with the ideal background for a 25-year career at the Association of American Medical Colleges followed by now two decades as a physician leadership coach. I’m never-endingly grateful to those students and to Dr. Galletti for birthing my career.