"A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for"

I was told that today, this the twenty-first of October two-thousand thirteen, marks my Johns Hopkins Birthday as I am now an official employee of this historic and ground breaking institution. I will discuss later and expound on the legacy of Johns Hopkins as I continue to learn more about why it has been declared the best hospital in America (U.S. News & World Report); but first a little about me.

First I must say that the quote entitling this post is a perfectly fitting analogy for my life at this point and it is courtesy of William Shedd; a theological philosopher of the late 1800's.

I was born and raised in Orem, UT and my parents named me Mary Deane Dyer for both my Grandmothers, Mrs. Gwendolyn Mary Franck and Mrs. Bonnie Deane Dyer. I am the middle child of a family of 7 children (one boy and 6 girls) and as such I believe I learned to be a sort of peace maker between the siblings, although others may have a different opinion.  My parents raised us all in the traditions of the LDS faith with strong emphasis in self-discipline with high expectations in our educational and vocational endeavors. As my father is a business professor at Brigham Young University I could not miss the opportunity of receiving a great education for an excellent price. After graduating BYU in 2010 I defected to the rivalry school, The University of Utah for my Masters of Physician Assistant studies, for which my father relented his distain only to the portion of the Medical School for which their MPAS program is ranked second in the nation. I received excellent training during my 27 month program and graduated early August of this year. Through this time of my didactic and clinical training I had many of my own personal challenges (including a divorce from a man I had been with for 8 years of my young life) but still I have always lived in Utah County with lots of family and friends around me for support through it all. So why then, after working so hard to get through school and finally achieving a comfortable state of being, did I feel the need to pick up all my things, leave the only home I've ever known and move to Downtown Baltimore to take a large pay cut with double the work load to spend a year as Surgical Resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital? The answer as to why I have ventured on this adventure is because I really do believe in these words by William Shedd.

This quote is also significant to me in that I have moved to an area of Downtown Baltimore called Inner Harbor. This is a beautiful area of the city and if you ever have a reason to visit Baltimore you must walk the paths around the harbor area. Each day as a resident I will be arising before the sun and leave the beauty of the Inner Harbor area and make my way through some of the more ghetto areas of the city to get to the Hospital (which I learned today, there was a shooting incident inside the Hopkins hospital in 2010 where one doctor was shot, a patient was murdered, and the shooter committed suicide). Each and everyday of my residency I will think of these words as I leave the comfort of my home on the harbor and go the intimidating sea of knowledge that awaits me at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I do know that this is the absolute best place for me to learn how to better serve and care for the patients and their families that come to me looking for help. And when days get tough, the hours get long, and the work never stops: I will remember - "A ship in harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

Inner Harbor, Baltimore taken 10/21/13