Medical school and the lessons learned from football

"In the Spring semester of my final year as a football player, my college team faced necessary coaching, staff, and player position changes. At this point in my college career, we had yet to have a winning season. These changes were made to shift our program’s culture and give us new life going into the upcoming Fall season. My new position coach, our team’s former linebacker coach, greeted us all in the defensive line room during our very first Spring position meeting with a stark message that, to this day, has changed my way of thinking about the hardships, especially now as a medical student during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During his message, he put up the Japanese symbol kiki (危機) on the overhead screen and questioned if any of us in the meeting room knew its meaning. As my teammates and I looked at each other thinking, what the heck is this guy up to … our coach informed us the symbol is written in kanji and translates to 'crisis.' (We thought he was only foreshadowing the imminent torture we were about to face that Spring as we prepared to change the trajectory of our program.)"

Casey Paul Schukow is a medical student.

He shares his story and discusses his KevinMD article, "In crisis, danger and opportunity are present." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/06/in-crisis-danger-and-opportunity-are-present.html)