Dear young lady watching,

I want to remind you that you were set on this earth for a purpose greater than yourself. You are not here by mistake. And the dreams and goals that lie in your heart are not there by happenstance. To reach your goals it will take an enormous amount of effort, but be confident that you are equal to the task because you have a higher power in your corner that can move mountains. You can’t give up because whether you know it or not, there is a #youngladywatching you! There will be voices in your head and doubt in your heart but you cannot let those penetrate into your destiny. Failure and rejection may come, but those things don’t determine your worth. Stay kind, remain humble, and always try to leave people better than you found them.

As a woman, and even more-so as a minority woman, you are likely to find yourself discredited, belittled, muted on your journey to and through medicine, especially within male-dominated specialties. You may not look like the majority of your classmates,  professors, or preceptors, but know you are not alone! You may, like me, find yourself sitting in an operating room lounge surrounded by white male surgeons who move around like you don’t exist. The desire to pursue a highly competitive specialty may be met with skepticism. People will doubt your abilities and judge you simply by the way you look. But it’s important to know again that you are not alone. There are women going before you, and with you, reminding you that all things are possible for those who work hard and believe. I serve as an example of one, and I hope that just my presence and journey through medicine will inspire another young lady to choose medicine and stick with it.

  • 22% of academic medicine professors are women.
  • Women make up 22% of surgeons in the US.
  • African-American women make up 4% of physicians in the US.
  • African-American women make up 2-5% of surgeons in the US.

The path to medicine, though arduous, culminates into the most noble and rewarding profession. And there’s a lot of maturation that has to take place before I’m even worthy of those two little letters behind my name. I’ve grown so much in just two and a half years of medical school, and I look forward to more challenges and failures, but also more wisdom and success. The best thing is that I’ve learned to put my wellbeing first and actually enjoy this crazy ride, and I encourage you to do the same.


This post was inspired by two family medicine physicians Dr. Lauren Powell and Dr. Kristamarie Collman who recently began the #youngladywatching movement on Instagram to empower women in medicine. I’m the young lady looking up to them and I wanted to uplift those watching me. Search the hashtag to find more inspiring stories!

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