- I like to say that medicine kind of lies
at an intersection between the knowledge,
the science knowledge that you need,
and I almost want to
say a performance art.
Hi, my name Abby Chen
and I just graduated from
Stanford this past June
as a part of the Class of 2020.
My journey through Stanford
was quite nontraditional (laughs)
I'll say that.
I matriculated in 2012
and then after my sophomore fall,
I took a four-year leave of absence
to dance with Ballet Austin.
I think for me, the moment that I realized
that I went to Stanford
was when I came back,
it was a beautiful day, it was like 85,
I was on Main Quad
and I just took a second to look around.
That was the moment that I was like, wow,
my childhood dream of coming to Stanford
is a reality and it really is everything
that everyone says it is.
No matter what you want to do
there's someone at Sanford that does it
at the highest level.
I actually finished classes in March,
so right in the midst of
the coronavirus pandemic,
and about two weeks after
the end of the quarter,
I got an email in my
inbox asking for EMTs,
and I happen to be a certified EMT,
I got certified when I was
an undergraduate at Stanford.
And so, I have spent the past three months
living out of a hotel, working
with COVID-positive patients
in longterm care facilities
and just providing surge staffing
in these facilities that have
really become focal points
of this tragic virus.
As someone who took eight
years to get their degree,
I think I just really didn't
expect those last few months
to feel as fast as they did.
It seems really, really daunting
that we're going out into
the professional world
and I think that as Stanford grads,
people expect a lot from us.
But for me, I think I
would remind everyone
that there's a reason that
they expect a lot from us
and it's because we do have
this incredible education
and just these incredible experiences
of being at Stanford for four years
that have really, really
prepared us for the real world,
even if it may not feel that way.
