Please limit your speech to 3-5 minutes.

I just found out today that I have been elected to be the class speaker at graduation.

When the School of Medicine doctoral hooding ceremony rolls around in 3 months, I will be up there on the stage of the Schnitzer, wearing an unbearably nonbreathable black polyester gown, looking out onto an audience of hundreds, hopefully meeting their collective expectant gaze with a very inspirational and stirring speech.

This is a huge honor, a great responsibility, and, quite honestly, an enormous shock.

My first reaction when the Dean of Medical Education announced the results this morning, was... "are you people insane?" You realize, of course, that you have elected someone to represent you to your loved ones who can only think in terms of television analogies? Do you realize that you will very likely end up with a short recap of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King as your graduation address? And that's the best case scenario. Worst case scenario: I get the giggles on stage after having too many "wake-up" mimosas and all of your cute little grandmothers who flew 2,000 miles just to see you graduate will end up booing me off the stage through their bitter, bitter tears. Tears of disappointment. Tears of shame.

Is that what you want?

Boy, do I have a lot of preparing to do if I am going to prevent the aforementioned scenario from coming to pass. Better come up with some good ideas. Here are some possibilities:

1. I conduct the whole speech around the analogy of medical school as the show Lost. You know: medical school = the plane trip, the island = residency, the mysterious monsters = the attendings, "the others" = the other residents. You see how deep the symbolism is getting here. I feel like I could really explore this.

2. The analogy of residency as the show Grey's Anatomy. There are so many similarities! Because they are interns and we are GOING to be interns! This is incredibly deep. A good way to relate to the masses. Maybe I could rip off my gown and be wearing low-cut scrubs underneath. Just a thought.

3. I deliver the talk on stress ulcer prophylaxis in non-critically ill patients that I just gave during my last internal medicine rotation. This option would really cut down on preparation time.

4. I "wing it" and "speak from the heart." Hmmm. I'm back to the crying grannies scenario with this one. Too risky.

5. Better yet - I start giving a drab, academic-style prepared speech, and then I pause. I crumple up the piece of paper that contains my notes. And I look the audience in the eye and say, "You know what.... this isn't me." And I launch into an impassioned tirade about my own personal journey, and it will look like I'm winging it and speaking from the heart, but I will actually be reading it from a separate piece of paper.

6. BETTER YET! I deliver the high school graduation speech that Ione Skye's character gives in Say Anything. See if anyone figures it out.

Well, if anyone has any better ideas, please let me know.