By Aliya Feroe
In the weeks preceding Harvard Medical School’s (HMS) Revisit Weekend 2018, the LGBTQ+ and Allies at HMS (LAHMS) group made a clear goal to host a memorable weekend with the goal of 100% matriculation of the admitted self-identified LGBTQ+ students. Despite being a co-chair of LAHMS, a point-person for queer women at HMS, and an openly Out member of the HMS Class of 2021 today, I continued to shock myself and all of the LAHMS co-planners this Revisit by the fact that I spent my own Revisit just last year crafting every excuse to avoid all LAHMS events—every excuse to conceal the importance of my LGBTQ+ identity from my new medical school classmates and faculty.
I have spent recent weeks reflecting on the source of this insecurity in revealing this notable part of my identity to a new community. There was certainly no longer any internal questioning of my sexuality by the time of Revisit: I had been Out to my family, hometown friends, and college friends for several years, had dated a woman for the past four years, and was an openly Out student at my undergrad Bowdoin College. Honestly, there is seldom much external questioning of my sexuality either in the way that I choose to present myself: a former collegiate ice hockey player (few women’s sports teams are notoriously gayer) seen almost strictly in athletic wear and pony tail tied tight to take on men everywhere, a big fan of craft breweries and flannels (this does not scream, “Hey, I’m straight!”), and an everyday strut that actively denounces society’s standards of femininity. But, despite this all, I re-entered the dusty, forgotten closet during my own HMS Revisit Weekend.
My regression to a concealed identity stemmed from questioning what role I wanted my LGBTQ+ identity to play in my medical school experience and/or medical career—a laughable thought today as I have since adopted the role as a leading LGBTQ+ activist at HMS and in the community with pride. Professionally, I knew very well the struggles of facing unconscious bias and have studied both the blatant and subtle discrimination against LGBTQ+ patients, physicians, and medical students. I thought that maybe if I could attempt to pass as straight, I could selfishly protect myself from these dangers. Interpersonally, I was also concerned about my LGBTQ+ identity becoming the initial block in the foundation of my medical school identity in the minds of my future classmates and faculty. I believed that this “coming out” at HMS would differ dramatically from “coming out” to my family, friends, and undergraduate classmates that had already known many other core components of my identity by the time I came out during my first and second years at Bowdoin.
While these professional and interpersonal concerns were valid, I find myself incredibly thankful that my LGBTQ+ identity had grown too large to sustain life back in the confines of the closet and that I forced myself to reveal this identity in medical school and, subsequently, harness its power in the form of activism. The comfort with being openly LGBTQ+ in medical school has grown proportionally with the strength of the relationships I have formed at HMS with classmates and faculty alike, and the further appreciation of the diversity in identities within this community. Never have I been surrounded by such a plethora of varied experience, thought, and belief, yet united by an unwavering dedication to being the most compassionate and astute physicians possible. My classmates carry themselves with a calm humility, yet deeper conversations reveal the many gems that have driven and supported each of them through their lives and into HMS and the medical profession. I soon found comfort in knowing that I certainly was and am not alone in the exploration and embracement of the essential elements of oneself.
Helping organize this year’s Revisit Weekend gave me the opportunity to reflect on just how welcoming and cultivating the HMS community is to a diverse mix of identities—and this is coming from somebody who re-entered and then immediately emerged from the closet in a matter of days upon beginning at HMS. I have confidence that HMS will continue to cultivate a community that not only accepts and celebrates diversity, but provides the resources and support to empower us aspiring physicians to use our diversity as tools for social change within and beyond the medical field. Never in my life have I felt prouder to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community and to use my voice to help improve the health of this marginalized population. Harvard Medical School has proven to be one incredibly special place for not just the study of medicine, but the study of self.
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