Despite the emotional challenges that my anatomy course presented, I feel reaffirmed in my desire to pursue medicine and now understand the beautiful complexity of the human body in a way I never could have before.

Keldon K. Lin, a second-year medical student at the Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in Scottsdale, Arizona, reflects on the common humanity that all patients, both living and dead, share with one another.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the June 2022 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.