White Coat--A Med Student's Song

Original music and lyrics by Nance Yuan

Performed by Nance Yuan and The Note-a-chords at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Class of 2012 White Coat Ceremony on March 23, 2009

Lyrics:

Colorful crayon scribbles
Posted on the classroom wall
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Was the question for us all.
We were too young then to be sure of our dreams
But we knew from picture books
That a lot of jobs were worth thinking about,
And they came with their different looks.
A police officer's uniform
A firefighter's hat
A corporate executive's business suit:
What do you think of that?
What would I end up wearing?
What job was right for me?
Years and years later I figured out
What I wanted to be.

CHORUS
I have other jackets
I have other clothes
But my white coat means a bit more to me than any of those
Clothes don't make the man
But it simply reminds me
I'm on my way to becoming the doctor that I'm gonna be
I'm almost there; I'm gonna be the doctor that I want to be.

The path to med school was a long one,
But getting in was just the start.
From here the road seems to stretch forever
It's not for the faint of heart
Anatomy labs and lecture halls and rotations can be tough
But the med student's job is to learn even when the going gets rough.
Generations of doctors came before
And they were once students too.
It's not strange that we don't know everything yet,
that we don't always know what to do.
Just value each day that comes to you
as a chance to learn a lot more.
Remember why you want to be here
And what your coat stands for.

CHORUS

And even when four years of med school ends,
And we trade our short coats for the long ones
We'll turn and look back at how far we've come
And we'll know that were not yet done.

Because medicine is always changing
so that improvements can be made.
The body of research keeps expanding
so that more lives can be saved.
The fountain of knowledge we drink from
But we must never quench our thirst
To understand more than we already do
And put our patients first.
In a way we'll always be students
Because the learning's never done.
Every day we'll be put to some kind of test
But I guess that's part of the fun.
The day we started our training
We committed to patient care
Sharing the values of doctors before us
To be worthy of what we wear.

CHORUS

I'll work hard to be an even better doctor than I thought I'd be
-- Just wait and see.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• white coat
• med student song
• Nance Yuan
• johns hopkins
• med school
• white coat ceremony
• acapella
• Noteachords
• jhmi