2008-03-03 - 5:35 p.m.
Several years ago I had a very good friend named Michael W Yeh. He lived in San Francisco with his wife, and I met him when I was working at the Cancer Research Center at UCSF. At the time, I was still very enthusiastic about getting into medical school and researching for cancer and volunteering in hospitals, and all the great things that go into that line of thinking. Michael was a chief resident of surgery at UC, and seeing my enthusiasm for medicine, he took me under his wing and let me volunteer with him when he was working. Michael was an incredible person, in that he was intelligent and caring, and very down-to-earth. We hung out in social settings as well, and he always made sure people were having a good time, whether it was at a party that he had thrown or at a dance club we had gone to together. I don't think I ever told him how much his friendship meant to me, and how much of an influence he was on my life at that time. I aspired to be like him, although I could never even hope to be as good as his shadow. As fate would have it, my attempts at taking the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test) and for medical school did not work out and I had to go back to school to raise my scores to try again. Just as I was leaving, so was Michael, in a move with his family to Australia for a prestigious surgery fellowship he had been awarded. I left for school, got good grades, and applied for medical school again. I failed again.
To this day, I cannot bring myself to contact Michael again. Whether it is from my shame for the medical school failure, after all of his mentoring and assistance, or from the sadness of not having kept contact with him after such a long time, I cower and hide inside whenever I think of Michael. He was my friend and I let him down. I cannot bring myself to try to contact him again.
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