Girl, you have done it! Look at you, nine months into intern year, being a whole doctor! I am so sooo proud of you. You worked so hard to get where you are. There were some curve balls along the way, but you took on each challenge and you conquered them. As a brand new intern, you were excited, yet nervous to finally be living your dream – providing care to patients. In the past nine months, I hope you remained curious, enthusiastic, motivated, self-directed, and teachable as you hoped to be when you started. I hope you continued to deliver compassionate care to your patients and continued to advocate for them when needed. I hope you have learned a lot from your co-residents and have developed and nurtured close relationships and friendships outside of the hospital walls. Most importantly, I hope you haven’t forgotten what you value – your family. I hope you and hubby were intentional about spending time together, and I hope you called your family once a week. Hopefully in the hustle and bustle of intern year, you still found time to be exercise. And if not, that’s okay. It was a lot of learning these nine months. I’m so proud of you. Keep doing amazing things girl. Shine on!

Cheers!

Derin

[Note: As part of residency orientation, we were asked to write a letter to ourselves to be read nine months from now at a retreat. This was my letter to self]