The Light in Their Eyes

There's a moment I wait for every year.

It happens in the introductory course to the Practice of Medicine. First-year students are learning to use their stethoscopes for the first time. Not as the patient. As the physician.

They place the diaphragm gingerly on someone's chest wall.

And then I see it.

The light in their eyes when they hear a heartbeat for the first time.

The Energy That Fills You Up

That energy, the excitement, the wonder, recharges me for another year. It makes me feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.

I didn't know this about myself until I stumbled into teaching.

When I started teaching on the side as a practicing physician, something unexpected happened. Medical students rotated through my clinic. I facilitated small groups. And I found myself doing something I'd never been taught to do: instead of giving students answers, I was helping them find the right questions.

What else could this be? What are we missing? What would change if we considered another possibility?

They weren't afraid to not know. They were curious about what they didn't know.

That curiosity? It was magnetic. I left every teaching encounter feeling more energized than when I started. The opposite of what clinic had become.

The Transformation That Takes Weeks

Here's what still astonishes me about medical education:

I watch students who are initially terrified of taking a history or performing an exam, not just doing it, but doing it in front of a group of other students and a faculty member, transform in just weeks.

Weeks. Not years. Not semesters. Weeks.

They go from terrified to hungry. Hungry for self-reflection. Hungry for feedback. Hungry for improvement.

We talk at the beginning of class about the fact that this is a place to make mistakes, to try and struggle, to reflect, and then do it again. I make sure they feel comfortable being vulnerable, asking for feedback, receiving it, and applying it.

When students feel safe enough to be vulnerable, they grow faster than anyone expects, including themselves.

Seeing that transformation is awe-inspiring. It's the part of my job that makes everything else worth it.

Teaching What I Wasn't Living

Here's the thing I didn't see at first:

I was teaching them something I wasn't fully applying to my own life.

I was helping students embrace uncertainty, ask questions, receive feedback without defensiveness. And I was doing it while still clinging to my own need to have all the answers.

I was teaching them that questions matter more than answers. That the learning process is more important than the final grade. That being wrong is how you get better.

Then I'd leave the classroom and go back to defending my own answers.

It took falling down a competency ladder, becoming a beginner again in medical education, for me to finally learn the lesson I'd been teaching all along.

The students didn't just learn from me.

I learned from them.

Why We Don't Give Them the Answer

Many times in our courses, we don't give students the final answer to the case.

This used to frustrate me when I was a student. I wanted the certainty. I wanted to know I had it right.

Now I understand: that's not the point.

The point is teaching them how to ask the right questions. How to sit with uncertainty. How to reason through complexity without needing someone to hand them the conclusion.

Because that's what being a physician actually requires. That's what being human requires.

The Thing That Fills You Up

I didn't know teaching would become my magnetic north. I discovered it by accident, because I had time to fill while my clinic was building.

Then the clinic got busier. Teaching got squeezed out. The restlessness set in.

Because I had found something that filled me up. I'd lost it. I couldn't unfeel what it had been like to feel alive in that way.

That restlessness? It was a signal. It was telling me something about my Ikigai, my sense of purpose, that I wasn't ready to hear.

If you're feeling restless, pay attention.

• What's the thing that gives you energy instead of draining it?
• What's the thing you miss when it's not on your calendar?
• What lights up your eyes the way that first heartbeat lights up my students'?

That might be your signal too.

If you're feeling that restlessness and trying to figure out what it's pointing toward, that's exactly the work I do as a coach. Book a free discovery call if you'd like to talk through what's calling you.

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