Dean’s Column

Congratulations to all of you, SKMC Class of 2020.

One thing is for certain—your class will win the prize for the most eventful graduation year, hands down!

One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami, one of Japan’s most distinguished literary writers. His novels are as much poetry as narrative. In his masterpiece novel “1Q84,” he writes: “Where there is light, there must be shadow, where there is shadow there must be light. There is no shadow without light and no light without shadow.”

From what’s transpired over these past few months, you’ve certainly had a bird’s-eye view of shadow and light—close-up, arrayed side-by-side.

Yet here’s a simple message to you, Class of 2020: favor the light—always look for that light beyond the shadow. Too easy to succumb to pessimism, to see the cup half-full. No—you’ve every reason to be optimists—starting with the simple fact that your generation of physicians will be armed with heretofore unimaginable breakthroughs in diagnostics and therapeutics, powered by machine intelligence and robotics. As this 21st century unfolds, you, unlike your predecessors, will be able to leverage revolutionary technologies to bring hope to so many who had once been hopeless.

But it’s more than that. As physicians, it’s actually your unsaid duty to be optimists. Your mandate is to lift the spirits of your patients, and of society at-large. Relentlessly seek out the positive and be an uplifting force for all those around you.

I myself have found my sense of optimism reinforced these past months—bolstered by the resilience, ingenuity, and even heroism I’ve witnessed here at Jefferson—among our faculty, our staff, our residents, and yes you, our students.

I’ve personally had the opportunity to interact closely with a number of you—at Dean’s concerts, in the Student Leadership Forum, and the like. Through this lens, I’ve gotten to see such wonderful human qualities and intellectual prowess. We’re proud of your many accomplishments these past four years, the volunteerism you have shown of late. You are now headed to an impressive array of residencies, and we’re confident in your future, hopeful that it will be suffused with light.

A last thought, again, crystallized by Haruki Murakami: “Unclose your mind. You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams.”

Class of 2020, go out and soar to great heights, freely fly into unfamiliar territories to continuously enrich your minds, and keep searching those skies for your dreams—for that light beyond the shadow.

Mark L. Tykocinski, MD
President, Thomas Jefferson University
Anthony F. and Gertrude M. DePalma Dean,
Sidney Kimmel Medical College