A Legacy of Motherhood
A few weeks ago, I attended a conference for OB/GYNs in Georgia and happened to bump into two of my former residents. I had been their attending doctor. For non-physicians, this meant that I served as their teacher and mentor while they were learning the ropes. To my great delight, they introduced me to colleagues as their “mom-in-residency.” More than just a teacher, I had been like an older sister or a mom to them, someone they could share real stories with. I take such pride in that now.
This chance encounter made me think back to a time about 10 years ago, when I was going through a job change. I had been working in academia for 12 years, teaching new OB/GYNs. But…
Being from Alabama and living in Connecticut, I was tired of the cold weather and ready to move back south. I was pregnant with my third child. And after my experience with a ridiculous gender disparity in salary, I was ready for a job that paid me what I was worth. I had found a job in private practice in Georgia that was going to check those boxes.
Seven Pages of Homework = Clarity
I was attending the ACOG conference with one of my mentors, Todd Jenkins. Prior to the conference, he asked me to do a 7-page worksheet, effectively “homework,” to prepare for the experience. Being type-A and a rule follower, I did the worksheet (even though, let’s be honest, nobody is excited about doing homework for a conference!) Thank goodness I did.
Todd read through the worksheet ahead of time and then sat down with me.
“Based on your answers on this worksheet, the most fulfilling parts of your job are service and teaching. And the private practice job you’re considering is only about the money.”
“It doesn’t matter how much money you make; at the end of the day, if your job is all about making money, but you aren’t doing service and aren’t teaching, you’re not going to be happy.”
Todd encouraged me to explore other job options because of that. He helped me to realize that I shouldn’t limit myself to private practice, despite the money, because it wasn’t aligned with my values and my mission. So I waited to find a position that was more suitable to my values.
Thankfully I did, and found a job at Emory University, teaching and doing what I love to do.
Tests Do Not Define Our Worth
Aside from those illuminating questions about the most fulfilling parts of my job, many of the questions on that worksheet were also about my legacy. What do I want my legacy to be?
I’ve written a lot about my Type-A personality and my drive to dot every i and cross every t. Because of this, when I was in college and med school, I had a serious drive to do well on my tests, to be a straight A student, to know all the answers.
Being a woman with undiagnosed ADHD, this drive was extremely hard to live up to. (We’ll get more into that struggle in a future post!) I scraped by on my tests. I went to a med school that I didn’t think had a lot of cache’. It was fairly new so wasn’t well known.
But I still ended up doing my residency with people who had gone to Ivy League schools. And I’m on faculty at Emory, one of the top medical schools in the country.
My Legacy as a Physician
What I’ve realized, and what COVID also helped teach me, is that tests, grades, and all those other assessments that I might have measured myself by, and previously judged my worth by, are not that important in the end. They haven’t defined me. They are not my legacy.
My legacy is that my former residents and students remember me as their Residency Mom. My legacy is that I have been a support system for my patients and my students. I have made people feel safe and seen in their learning environments, something I lacked when I was in med school.
I plan to continue this work as a support system; it continues to be my legacy.
Who has served as a support system for you, in medicine, in education, in your life? What do you see as your legacy to those you work for?
