The formative experience I had long sought emerged outside the context of feedback itself. I had spent my rotation in search of people who would change me, but I had not expected to find them dressed in johnnies rather than long white coats.

Grace Ferri, a fourth-year medical student at Boston University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, reflects on the patient who helped her remember where she came from, and—most importantly—where she belonged, during a stressful day on the wards.

The essay read in this episode was published in the Teaching and Learning Moments column in the December 2021 issue of Academic Medicine. Read the essay at academicmedicine.org.