The following is my vision statement (on how I saw myself in ten years) that I wrote for my medical school application in 2001. Although I had no clue about what kind of physician I wanted to become (generic essay answer: George Clooney in the ER television show), I already knew that international health, particularly Viet Nam would be part of my vision. Except that vision was partly wrong; I went to South Africa rather than Somalia and it’s only 2005 not 2011.
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Cuong Pham - Vision Statement October 15th, 2001
Honking blasts from the zigzagging vehicles on the crowded city street. The noisy deluge of motorbikes wakes me from my midday nap. Sometimes dust or the stench of sewage packs the air. Other times the scents of lovely flowers and delicious noodle soups accent the air. Outside the window, the pervasive poverty and disease desensitize the eye. This overpopulated city life is not exactly Los Angeles or New York City. The year 2011 is printed on the newspapers, but the slow-paced life here contradicts the westernized view of modern times. Yet, underlying the low standard of living lays the richness of a culture stemming from the Chinese and French. This blending of cultures creates a city that is always changing. This is Saigon, Vietnam. As my Vietnamese and American cultures blend, my path in medicine continually changes.
The past ten years have been the quickest and boldest snapshot of my life. My self-image at twenty-one years of age has become an inscrutable memory as I stride into my thirties. A few years back, life in a non-stop emergency room in a busy American city thrilled me with its liveliness, overwhelmed me with its complexities, and sometimes dulled me with its repetition. On occasion, I survived by visceral medical decisions. Speed and the efficient teamwork of nurses, EMTs, and paramedics had become the essence of my medical practice. We treated a wide range of ailments from minor stitches to heart attacks. At moments I stretched myself to difficult limits, but the stretching only made me more flexible in life. In turn, this flexibility encouraged me to seek challenging opportunities.
Still, I did not foresee that I would shortly enter a completely different phase of my life. Growing up in picket-fenced suburbia made me hungry for culture. In the year 2010, I found myself educating the Somalian people on health and nutrition. I finally glimpsed the beauty of Somalia, which was originally brought to my attention by the African children who I tutored during my early college years. Here, I spread the awareness of HIV, public health, hygiene, and sanitation. I learned not to force my westernized view of life onto the people of Africa and the world, but to merely promote the basic human right of health. The African people opened up their lives to me. In turn, I gained a cultural and social concept of medicine that I never grasped from textbooks.
For the past month, I have been completing a circle of my life with my return to Vietnam, my homeland. Vietnam drove me to devote my life to medicine and health. I came to Vietnam primarily to help my people with medicine, but there was a secondary motive as well: re-connecting my past. The people came into the small hospital with forced smiles covering their painful ailments. With or without the needed medical aid, they left graciously with a firm handshake and positive outlook. I began redefining my world of medicine as I immersed myself in a seemingly distant culture.
Here, I am not a Vietnamese minority, but rather an American minority. I stick out with my mannerisms and with my Americanized version of the Vietnamese language. My awkwardness makes me anxious with my own people. A hole in my Asian American identity closes as I realize that my answers are not buried in Vietnam; the answers are within myself. Life for me is now a changing journey. I change as I move. Medicine took me from an urban hospital to Somalia to Vietnam. I am prepared to move where medicine will take me next.
About: Cuong Pham
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