 You may be seated. Good afternoon. It is a great pleasure to welcome all of you to the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine's white coat ceremony for the class of 2017. Particular ceremony stands as a bookend on one end of the student's experience entering the profession of medicine. The other end of this set of bookends will occur at the time the students graduate from our medical school. This particular ceremony is an official and public celebration welcoming these students into an ancient profession, an ancient profession that is filled with rituals and ceremonies. And this particular ceremony serves as a public statement of our newest group of medical students to the public whom they will serve. It is a public statement to uphold the fundamental tenets of this ancient profession. And simultaneously, it is a public statement on behalf of the faculty of the University of Chicago to say to our newest group of students that none of us enter this profession completely alone, nor will we be sustained by our own merits and fortitude. We are sustained as physicians in this profession because of the enormous generosity and support from those who are around us, those who are our peers, those who are our friends and family, and those who will be your teachers, your faculty. And so in this public ritual and this public ceremony, we are making a pledge to one another that as you, our students, take this first step into this ancient and honorable profession, we will be there with you. We will be standing with you side by side. We will be there with you as your teachers and at the bedside and in the clinics as you meet and greet and take care of patients who will come from all walks of life and who will teach you more than you can ever begin to imagine at this particular moment. And so to get started with this ceremony today, we have two individuals who will bring greetings. First is Dean Kenneth Polanski. Dean Polanski is the Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences here at the University of Chicago and Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Prior to assuming his role as Dean, Dr. Polanski served for a decade as Chair of the Department of Medicine at Washington University in St. Louis. Following Dr. Polanski's comments, we will have greetings brought to you by the Alumni Association. Here today, representing the Alumni Association is Chris Elbanus, graduate of the class of 2000. Dr. Polanski? Thank you, Holly, and welcome to all of you. This is a wonderful way to get started with your career, so congratulations. Congratulations to the students on the choice of medicine as a career. You couldn't have made a better decision. I'd like to congratulate you on selecting the University of Chicago. This is an absolutely wonderful school to train, and you will have a wonderful time here. You'll be extremely well-educated, and congratulations to you and to your families on all of the accomplishments that got you here. So let's give a round of applause to the students and to their families. So I can assure you that interactions with our medical students is a very special aspect of what we as faculty do, and education is at the core of our focus and identity. So we take very seriously the role that we play in educating you to become physicians. As Holly mentioned, this ceremony provides an opportunity for us to contemplate the rich traditions of medicine. And when you put on your white coats for the first time, the signals that you have officially begun the process of becoming the physicians of the future. The reading of the Hippocratic Oath that will also occur during the ceremony honors Hippocrates, the Greek physician, who lived between 460 and 380 BC. And he is regarded as the father of Western medicine. Now interestingly, before Hippocrates, it was believed that disease was a punishment visited on humans by the gods for bad behavior. And he was the first one who postulated that disease was a natural phenomenon that obviously set up medicine as a scientific discipline that was amenable to objective study. He also had a remarkable sense that acting in the interests of our patients is central to the identity and role of the physician, and that we do whatever we can to ensure that we do no harm to them. The reading of the Hippocratic Oath today should remind you that you are about to become part of a proud tradition of physicians devoted to the well-being of their patients for thousands of years. Now your ability to, as physicians, to improve outcomes for your patients depends on a sophisticated understanding that we have today of both the human body and human disease. Much of what is known, we take for granted, and tend to forget that these advances result from the contributions of many brilliant physicians like yourselves over hundreds of years. Modern medicine rests on landmark discoveries, such as the demonstration that the body is made up of millions of cells, that we have a circulatory system, that we are predisposed to infections that can be prevented by simple techniques such as hand washing and treated with antibiotics, that a hormone insulin that was discovered turned diabetes from a disease that was fatal within weeks or months into a disease where people can live productively for decades, the discovery of anesthetic agents that has enabled modern surgery, advances in genetics that promise a new era of personalized medicine, in which we can more precisely diagnose and treat disease based on individual disease characteristics. It is a truly exciting time to be entering medicine, and it's a time when science has opened up so many opportunities to advance human health. I urge you not only to be aware of these wonderful examples of the relationship between science and medicine, but to put yourselves in a position to make your own contributions to medical knowledge. The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and our Biological Sciences Division is one of the best medical schools in the country to do so, and so please take advantage of the opportunities. So let me welcome you once again. I look forward to many opportunities to interact over the next four years. Congratulations, and thank you very much for choosing to come here. On behalf of the University of Chicago, Medical and Biological Sciences Alumni Association, I welcome the Pritzker class of 2017 to the University and to the Alumni Association. The Alumni Association, you might ask, but you haven't even started yet. Well, let me tell you, time flies. While it seems like yesterday to me, it was 17 years ago that I had the honor and the privilege of donning my white coat at this very ceremony. Today I have the honor and the privilege of providing the gift of sight to many as a practicing ophthalmologist, managing partner at Arbor Centers for Eye Care, and a faculty member at the University of Chicago. As a proud member of the Pritzker class of 2000, the foundation of the work I do today was all started right here. I'm thankful to have received an education from a group of faculty whose passion for their profession is insurmountable. I became friends with my fellow medical students, and these friendships have transcended time. I encourage you to take the time to learn and listen to each other. You all come from very, very different backgrounds and life experiences, and learning from each other's experiences will make you a stronger healer over time. As a member of the university community, you're joining the ranks now of thousands of alumni who are leaders in medicine and science around the world. You are the future of the Alumni Association, and therefore we are very much invested in your success. We're here to provide you with the community of mentors, alumni and friends, opportunities for networking locally, nationally, and internationally at the top medical centers and research facilities. Through generous donations of alumni, we are also able to work towards providing funding for your medical school educations through scholarships and loans when available. Please use us as a resource. I also want to extend a very, very big welcome to the family members, spouses, and friends who are here today for your ongoing support of your loved one. Please know that these students will be working very, very diligently to become healers over the next four years. Some nights they will call you full of desire to chat about their experiences of the day, the fact that they helped a patient in need, the fact that they delivered a baby today, the fact that they assisted in open heart surgery. However, there will be many other nights where there is silence as they are studying for a very important final exam, which has become all-time consuming. I hope you continue to be understanding, supportive, and patient through the highs and lows of medical education. Becoming a doctor is one of the most rewarding things one can do, but also one of the most challenging, as the amount of knowledge one learns is simply incredible. No patient is the same. You will learn from my mentor and good friend, Dr. Siegler, of the importance of listening to the patient. Here at the University of Chicago, fellow colleagues, you're gonna have the opportunity to listen to a Nobel Prize winning professor in one room, and in the very next room, a 12 year old who just gave birth to a premature infant. Are you going to treat those two patients the same? Are you going to treat them differently? These are some of the challenges that you will find in medicine. And through all the progress that has been made through science and technology, we continue to work in a healing profession, healing of the human body and the spirit. Many questions are left unanswered, leading to frustrations. Thankfully, through the curiosity and desire to succeed and heal, we find discoveries. These discoveries are made at the University of Chicago by students, faculty and alumni. Welcome to this team of discoveries. I encourage you students to know your limits. You're amazing individuals with great skill sets. You'll be asked of patients, families and friends, questions, you'll be asked to do procedures for the first time, and to assist people in times of their most important time of stress. Please know that you're always surrounded by faculty, colleagues, alumni and friends who are willing and able and wanting to help. The motto of the University of Chicago is Crescat ciencia vita escalator. Let knowledge grow from more to more and so be human life enriched. If you don't know the answer, that's okay. That's why you're here, to learn and seek the guidance of others. And remember, above all, the patient comes first. And as doctors, we must first do no harm. You're entering a profession where you will be called on as the trustworthy source of all things medical. That might just start tonight. So the questions posed by your family, friends and future patients are of utmost importance to them. They will share secrets with you that they will share with no one else. This is an amazing gift that you now have. I congratulate you on entering this amazing profession. And I once again welcome you to this alumni community of lifelong learners. We look forward to hearing about your successes and your discoveries. And we wish you all the best throughout your training. Congratulations. Long before our newest group of students arrived on this campus, we have been planning for and preparing for their arrival. Specifically, a very large and talented group of second year medical students working closely with members of the staff of the Pritzker School of Medicine have been actively engaged in planning the orientation activities as well as this particular ceremony. On the back of your program, you will see the names of all of the second year students who have specifically been engaged in the planning of this ceremony. And it is now my great pleasure to introduce to you three of those students who have the great privilege of introducing this afternoon's keynote speaker. Those students who will be doing the introduction are Caitlyn Chicoyne, Aubrey Jordan, and Leslie Mataya. Good afternoon. My name is Aubrey Jordan, and I am joined by Caitlyn Chicoyne and Leslie Mataya. We are second year medical students and the co-chairs for today's white coat ceremony. We would like to congratulate each and every person here today. Some of you had a goal, and today is a moment of recognition. You've done it. You are here about to receive your very first white coat. Others of you, the family and friends of the class of 2017 have supported these dreams in so many ways. And today also serves to thank you for all you've done. The field of medicine marks transition with ceremony, and today you experience your first. These ceremonies often make a point to ask those being celebrated to reflect on what they have accomplished and all they have experienced, and we invite you to do the same today. We also ask you to listen to the message of Dr. Lawrence Hurgott, who draws upon Native American imagery as he reflects on the topic. He writes, a Hopi image depicts a person standing near the end of a maze that symbolizes the course of a life. Looking back and seeing that it was, after all, good. At the end of our careers, hopefully we will feel the same. Waiting until then to observe an introspect though means missing a lot along the way. End quote. As you begin your medical education, we also encourage you to not wait for the next ceremony to reflect on your own growth and the larger purpose you become a part of. Do this as often as you can. Take a moment when you are sitting in a healthcare disparities lecture to recognize that you are learning about inequities that as a physician, you will have the ability to influence. Take a moment when you are sitting in the library with classmates to recognize that you are surrounded by people who like you are putting in countless hours to become the competent physicians we all rely on at some point in our lives. Take a moment in the anatomy lab to be amazed that you have the opportunity to discover the human body beyond descriptions and lectures or drawings and books. Take a moment when you are leaving a patient's room to feel grateful that they have trusted you with their story and care, in part because of the white coat you received today and the tradition it represents. We hope that the ceremony marks the beginning of a thoughtful and reflective journey towards becoming a physician. We are excited to be a part of your first ceremony in the medical profession and the Pritzker community. And now we would like to introduce your keynote speaker, Dr. Mark Siegler. To us and our classmates, Dr. Siegler is well known and admired as the course director of the doctor-patient relationship class which allowed us as first year students to reflect on larger ethical and humanistic issues in clinical medicine. But his presence at the university reaches far beyond this classroom. In fact, it will have spanned 50 years come this September since he first arrived on campus to attend Pritzker himself. Dr. Siegler is the Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Chicago and founding director of the university's McLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics. In 2011, Dr. Siegler was appointed the executive director of the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence. His 40-plus year career, practicing and teaching internal medicine at the University of Chicago, began when he served as intern resident and chief resident in medicine, followed by a year of advanced training at the Hammersmith Royal Postgraduate Hospital in London, England. In 1972, he joined the University of Chicago faculty, organizing and directing one of the early medical intensive care units. This experience with critically ill patients introduced him to a range of clinical ethical problems that led him to develop and pioneer the field of clinical medical ethics. In 1984, the University of Chicago established the McLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics, the first program in the nation devoted to studying practical everyday issues in medicine. In its first decade, the McLean Center was chosen by U.S. News and World Report for three consecutive years as the leading medical ethics program in the United States. Since then, the McLean Center under Dr. Siegler's direction has become the largest program in clinical ethics in the world, a program that now includes five endowed university chairs in clinical ethics. More than 300 physicians and other health professionals have trained at the McLean Center, many of whom now direct ethics programs in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Recently, the McLean Center was awarded the Cornerstone Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities for outstanding contributions from an institution that has helped shape the direction of the fields of bioethics and or medical humanities. The McLean Center is one of only four institutions to have received this prestigious honor in the past 20 years. Please join us in welcoming your keynote speaker, Dr. Mark Siegler. I don't know what to say after such a lovely introduction. Thank you. Welcome, Dean Polanski, Dean Humphrey, Dr. Albanus, colleagues, and guests. I greet you and thank you for participating in this splendid celebration to welcome and honor the entering medical school class at Pritzker, the great class of 2017. And to you, members of the class of 2017, as well as to your parents, families, and friends, I bring a warm welcome from my medical colleagues on the faculty, as well as from your fellow students in the second, third, and fourth year classes. I wanna congratulate you, the members of the entering class, for having made three great decisions. First, you've chosen to enter medicine, a noble and respected profession. Second, you've picked an ideal time to become physicians. And third, you've chosen a world-renowned medical school and university at which to learn how to become competent and caring doctors. Let me start with your first decision, that is your decision to enter medicine. Medicine is not only one of the world's most honored professions, it is also one of the most satisfying. There are very few professions where at the end of each and every day, you can come home knowing that you spent that day, that entire day trying to help other people. Second, you've chosen a great time to join the medical profession, a time of enormous scientific advances. The scientific advances of the last 100 years have been one of the great intellectual achievements in human history, comparable to 5th century Greece, the Italian Renaissance, or Elizabethan England. This year marks the 60th anniversary of James Watson and Francis Crick's discovery of the double-heelic structure of DNA, a discovery that opened the modern era of molecular biology, genetics, and personalized medicine. We are very proud that James Watson was a graduate of the University of Chicago. More recently, in fact, just last year, one of the alumni of the Pritzker Medical School, Dr. Bruce Beutler, who graduated from Pritzker in the class of 1981, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the activation of innate immunity. In my professional lifetime, which you've heard really means my 50 years here at the University of Chicago, this scientific revolution has included a new understanding of human immunology, the mapping of the human genome, and the development of modern pharmacology, pharmacology which has created hundreds, hundreds of new and effective medicines that save lives and improve the quality of life. My generation is also the first in history that has been able to prevent death from kidney, liver, heart, or lung failure through surgical advances, such as organ transplantation. In the early 20th century, at the University of Chicago, just about 200 yards from where the class, the new class is sitting today, Dr. Alexis Carell pioneered the transplant revolution with experiments and surgical innovations for which he won a Nobel Prize in 1912. Your decision to enter medicine this year is timely for still another extremely important reason. At last, here in America, we have begun to solve some of the great political and social problems of our time. Specifically, the problems of improving access to healthcare for 50 million people, of making healthcare available and affordable, and of reducing disparities and inequalities in the name of justice and fairness. You, you will be in the medical school when the core of the Affordable Care Act is implemented two months from now. Your generation will experience the impact of the Affordable Care Act, just as my generation rejoiced when Medicare and Medicaid were launched in the mid-1960s as part of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society legislation. I still remember, I still remember how Medicare and Medicaid made it possible for me to care for elderly and poor patients, patients who previously had lacked access to healthcare. Healthcare reform this year will allow you and your colleagues throughout your careers to care for all patients as equals. The third great decision you made, and the dean referred to it, was choosing to study medicine at this medical school and university. At the University of Chicago, we are recognized not only for our scientific accomplishments and Nobel Prizes, but also because we are dedicated to combining the science of medicine with the art of personal care. We think the dichotomy between the science and art of medicine is a false dichotomy. Science and personal care are not in opposition. In fact, they are two parts of the same deep commitment to our patients. Even after 45 years in practice, I often think of my clinical teachers and have warm memories of those who taught me how to be a doctor. Joe Kersner, Arthur Rubenstein, George Block, Lou Cohen, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, and many more. Your class will learn from a group of outstanding clinical teachers and scientists, many of whom are with us here today, some on the podium, some in the audience. These physicians will guide you and teach you how to combine scientific knowledge with personal qualities that will help you build strong doctor-patient relationships. The question sometimes is raised whether in our age of remarkable scientific achievements, we still need the old-fashioned doctor-patient relationship and personal medical care. I think the answer to this question is a resounding yes. Personal medicine will continue to be important for your generation of doctors, as it has been for mine, for at least the following three reasons. First, medicine serves a universal and unchanging human need by helping people who have physical or mental distress and who turn to doctors for care and support. This fundamental, original encounter has not changed much in 4,000 years. Second, most medical care is provided in the setting of a doctor-patient relationship, and both patients and doctors want to preserve these personal aspects of medicine. And third, there is growing evidence that a strong doctor-patient relationship provides the best quality of care as well as the most cost-effective care. Specifically, good doctor-patient relationships improve the accuracy of diagnosis, increase patients' willingness to follow a treatment plan, improve patient satisfaction with care, and good relationships achieve better results in chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure, or depression. To advance our teaching of the doctor-patient relationship, the Biological Sciences Division and the Pritzker School of Medicine started the Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence two years ago with a generous gift from the Bucksbaum family. The mission of the Bucksbaum Institute is to improve patient care, to enhance communication and decision-making between doctors and patients, and to strengthen the doctor-patient relationship. At an orientation luncheon tomorrow for the entering class, I'll describe a number of ways in which each of you in the entering class can get involved in the activities and programs sponsored by the Bucksbaum Institute. Today, on the occasion of the white coat ceremony, the Bucksbaum Institute and the Pritzker School of Medicine will give each of you a gift, a gift in addition to the white coat. The gift will be a gift of a stethoscope that we hope you will use throughout your careers. These stethoscopes, as some of you in the front rows can see, have been customized for you with the maroon color of the University of Chicago instead of traditional colors. Like the white coat, the stethoscope symbolizes the clinical encounter of patient and physician and highlights the union of scientific medicine and personal care. We hope you will use your new stethoscopes with an eye to the future and an ear to the heart of your mission as a doctor. We, your teachers, commit ourselves to teach and mentor you on both of the essential components of medicine, the science and the art. Please remember, the science and the art are not in opposition, but both are needed to provide the best care for our patients and the care of patients must always remain our primary focus in medicine. Once again, welcome to this great university and medical school and welcome to this great profession, a profession you are joining at a time when science can do more than ever and when access to care will soon become available to all. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Siegler. I always learn when I'm in an audience and Dr. Siegler is speaking. We are now going to move to the segment of today's ceremony that, in fact, is the investing of each student with his or her white coat. As we move into this segment of this afternoon's program, I want to explain that the students will be called to the front of the platform in groups of societies. We have four advising and mentoring societies at our medical school. Each advising and mentoring society have students from all four years of the medical school engaged in that society and each society has two senior faculty members who serve as the society advisors. It's those two society advisors who will be doing the actual investing with the white coat this afternoon. And so, when I call the name of each student, each student will be invested with their white coat by the individual faculty member who will be one of their key career advisors over the course of their four years in our medical school. It is also the case that our students will receive the gift from the Bucksbaum Institute and the Pritzker School of Medicine that Dr. Siegler just referenced and the students who will be participating in this investiture ceremony include the overall orientation co-chairs who have worked tirelessly for the past six months preparing all of the orientation activities. Carrie Coon and Brenna Hughes, and I'd like to invite all of you to join me in thanking them. And so, we will begin this afternoon with the Lowell Kageshaw Society. The faculty career advisors are Drs. Brian Callender and Mindy Schwartz. I would like to ask members of the audience to please hold your applause until I have introduced all of the members of each society, and I promise, when we get to the end of each society, we will engage in thunderous ovations. Jed Abhimansur, Evan Biggs, Daniel Bleak, Ayushu Shandramani, Morgan Covington, Vishon Domsania, Sean Gaffney, Steven Nicholas Graves, Jordan Howard Green, Ushaan Hugh, Michael Kang, Catherine Kinosh, Suje Kalshwita, Richard Loeb, Amy Meyer, Ufan Milola Oladini, Rebecca Ortiz Weisberg, Juana Raikou, Saududin Siddiqui, Cesar Soria-Hemenez, Rachel Stones, Christopher Watson. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in congratulating the members of the Kageshaw Society. Next, we will move to the Deliz Society, faculty advisors, doctors Patricia Kurtz and Tipu Puri, Joseph Belairs, Brandon Berger, Raj Banwadia, Sophia Canavan, Laura Christensen, Evan Farina, Anupriya Gongal, Megan Gonzalez, Alexander Guzetta, David Hamilton, Sasank Kanda, Victoria Lee, Yuen Lu, Jessica Marot, Christopher Mattson, Molly McCary, Richard Newcomb, Pamela Peters, Steven Tate, Obiyama Okabula, Jack Weich, Jacob Young. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in congratulating the members of the Deliz Society. Next is the Charles B. Huggins Society, the faculty advisors, our doctors Nana Park and Shalini Reddy. Hassanin Elkarashan, Patrick Differding, Elizabeth Donnelly, Olusheyi Fianju, Sean Fisher, Victoria Gile, Albert Lee, Trevor Lee, Danielle Lowray, Joseph Likens, Laurie Nasbush, Jonathan Oskverik, Alice Peng, Jane Rivas, Michael Reidberg, Brian Schlick, Brady Still, Victoria Thomas, Sophia Udine, Shilpa Vashesta, Margaret Wang, Richard Wang. Ladies and gentlemen, join me in congratulating the members of the Huggins Society. And now we will induct the members of the Femister Society with faculty advisors, doctors Elizabeth Keith and Jason Poston. Garav Ajmani, Joseph Bergen, Daniel Camacho, Benjamin Casterline, Stuart Davidson, Shakila Faulkner, Bobby Joe Ava Ferguson, Yahi Nina Gao, Karla Garcia Huerta, Curtis Ginder, Oliver Holland, Muiwa Idewu, James Luo, Jeanaki Patel, Michael Petrovic, Raphael Rabinowitz, Hannah Roth, Gabriel Saltzman, Sufian, Megan Tusken, Jackie Wang, Rebecca Wellman. Let us all join in congratulating the members of the Femister Society. And now it is my great pleasure to introduce you to our Associate Dean for Medical School Education and a very talented and highly sought after general internist, my colleague, Dr. Helena Brukner, who will lead our newest students in the recitation of the physician's oath. Good afternoon. I'd like to ask the class of 2017 to stand please and turn around and face the audience. I would also like to invite any physicians in the room who care to join us to please rise and recite the oaths along with our future colleagues. And we'll recite it together. In the tradition of Hippocrates and all other great physicians who have come before me in the ancient field of medicine, I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this pledge. I will be just and generous to those who have taught me this art, holding them in highest esteem, and will give guidance and instruction freely to all who wish to follow in this path. I will strive to correct the knowledge that I have acquired and to extend its domain while remembering that medicine is more than science and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may heal as well as the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug. I will practice my arts solely for the benefit of my patients, knowing that at times I must put their interests before my own. May I never see in my patients anything but a fellow human in pain. My goal will be to help or at least to do no harm. I will remain free of all intentional injustice, practicing with integrity and honor, and will not exploit my privileged role in the lives of my patients. What is revealed to me in confidence I will keep inviolably secret. I will use my skills to serve all in need with openness of spirit and without bias. In the presence of my teachers, my family, and my friends, I make this pledge freely and upon my honor. I am ready for my vocation, and now I turn unto my calling. Congratulations, and thank you. Students, you may be seated. Believe it or not, you have all just completed, I think, one of the most nerve-wracking hurdles of beginning medical school. It's actually not quite so easy to figure out how to get up on this platform and get your arms in the right holes and then turn at the right time to smile for the camera and make your way back to your seat without tripping and falling. We really do not do that in any way to provoke anxiety or to create humiliation. As I said at the very beginning, we do this to embrace you and to welcome you into this ancient profession and to know that when you go through these next few days, weeks, months, and years, that you will not be alone. You will be surrounded by these who are now your classmates. I only wish the time allowed me to recount the accomplishments of this class of students. Already at this very early point in their lives, they have done amazing things. Obviously, they have excelled academically or they would not have a position in this class, but beyond academics, they have been engaged in unbelievable service and volunteer work. We have some unbelievable athletes in this class. I know that the intramural teams from the Pritzker School of Medicine are likely to take the championship trophies at the University of Chicago for the next four years, but most of all, it's what's inside these white coats that matter. There's a physician named Philip Hall, who several years ago published a paper by exactly that title. It's what's inside the white coat that counts. And because I know a little bit more about this class of students than all of you assembled know, I can tell you that what's inside the white coats assembled here today is truly extraordinary. And if you were sitting close enough to the front, you may have glimpsed a few of the innate reflexes of this class. When a classmate noted that he or she was blocking the camera, they took three steps back and allowed their classmate, their moment in front of the camera lens. When someone inadvertently got out of line, the classmate tapped them on the shoulder and redirected them to their proper position in the line. And most of all, to my right, I could see and feel the way they were nervously concerned not only about how they were going to step onto this platform, but how they were going to be there for their peers as they stepped forward to the platform. And so those very human and innate instincts that cause us to feel another person's pain turn out to be hugely helpful to the healing process. Even with the incredible scientific advances that are with us in 2013, at the end of the day, there often come moments when our medications can no longer be of service and our surgical and other therapeutic options are not going to relieve suffering. But the element of healing that comes from a very deep and personal point of view is what we believe this class of students have. We also know that they didn't just get that deep innate empathy all by themselves growing up in isolation, but they developed that innate human set of instincts because of the experiences they had in your homes and in your communities and in all of those ways that you who have gathered here today have supported them and nurtured them so that they can arrive at this moment in life to nurture and support others. And so on behalf of all of us at the Pritzker School of Medicine, I want to extend a special thank you to the families and the friends who are here with us today in support of our newest class of students. We are grateful to you for everything that you've done up until this point, but we are counting on you to be there as our students take these next steps forward into this complex and challenging profession. It is also my great pleasure to invite all of you to join us as we continue to celebrate this newest class of students and we will be doing that immediately across the street in the Booth School of Business and I will add that it is an air conditioned venue where we will have some light food and beverages. And at this moment as the ceremony closes our students will recess out of the cathedral and then they will return to the front of the sanctuary where they will take their place on the risers behind me and we will have a group photograph. Once we have taken the group photograph we will ask the students to stay in place in case any of you who are here today would like to take your own photograph. And so my final word is to our class of 2017. I want you to remember this afternoon. I especially want you to remember this afternoon next February. February in Chicago can be a very long month even though it's short by the number of days the days themselves are very short and the temperature can be perhaps lower than many of you who have experienced earlier in your life. But most of all there are a lot of down days in medicine those down days somehow are managed because of the power of the transforming experiences that we have with our patients and with each other. There are very few moments quite like this one. But when you have one of those down days I want you to remember that not only did we engage in this wonderful ceremony and hear the inspiring words from Dr. Siegler and you felt the love and support of our students, faculty, your friends and family. But you will reflect back and remember that this whole ceremony is rooted in those ancient principles of the profession which you will hear us talk about again and again during your time here in medical school. And when you have one of those down days I hope that you'll remember that it's this group of people and all those people who were happy on the day that you were born who aren't in this room who are going to carry you through. And those of us who will watch you go through will be applauding. Sometimes that won't be obvious to you but on occasions like this it's very obvious. And so let me invite the entire assembled crew to congratulate you as you rise and exit the cathedral. Congratulations.