Emmy Award-winning neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta delivered the keynote address at today’s 2023 Class Day celebration for the Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. He explained to the graduates what he thought being a doctor actually entailed.
For more than 20 years, Gupta, CNN’s lead medical correspondent, has covered medical and public health issues extensively and throughout the globe. He was the first western journalist to visit Conakry, Guinea, to cover the fatal Ebola outbreak in 2014. He also traveled to Kathmandu to record the effects of a huge earthquake that struck Nepal in 2015. Gupta’s work has sent him to the front lines of the Middle Eastern wars, the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. He won several Emmys for his investigative work.
Gupta started his speech, “What I Know Now That I Wish I Knew Then,” by congratulating the graduates and outlining the responsibilities that come with becoming a doctor. A doctor “for life,” according to Gupta. It is most likely going to be a fundamental aspect of who you are. Others will have “all sorts of notions” about the graduates’ character and level of competence; some could even believe they picked their line of work in order to get wealthy. Gupta said, “Going into medicine for the money is kind of like having sex for the exercise,” which brought laughter from the audience.
After thanking the audience for allowing him to speak, Gupta informed the graduates that their jobs as medical professionals had now “taken on a greater sense of urgency.” Although he didn’t “want to put too much pressure” on the graduates, he still informed them that they were “more important than ever.” He declared, “In my opinion, you are the new guardians of the galaxy.”
