05/31/2026
Sometimes I feel like I’ve lived 1,000 lives already. Most of the time, I feel like I’ve been playing catch-up or fighting an uphill battle.
When your parents don’t go to college, and you are not surrounded by people who have, there is no way to explain how foreign that landscape is. College applications, graduate school, research, medicine, professional expectations, the hidden rules, the language, the timeline, the doors you do not even know exist… None of it feels obvious and most of it is overwhelming when you are seeing it for the first time.
In graduate school at Cortland, I worked as an assistant track coach and taught exercise physiology to avoid taking on more debt. Halfway through, after a lot of reflection on how I could make the greatest impact with my life, I decided to apply to medical school.
That meant giving up my jobs, taking on 40 additional STEM credits in 12 months on top of my master’s coursework, and betting $30,000 in loans on those prerequisite credits on the belief that I could get accepted. *In retrospect, that was nothing compared to now*
The last four years of medical school have been tough. They taught me a lot about myself, and even more about the world. I am not the same person I was when I started this journey, but the core of who I am has not changed. I love my wife, I love my family, and I’m proud of where I’m from.
I am grateful to my Mom for everything, for Sydney for choosing to stand beside me through all of it, and for my coaches for teaching me to believe that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.
Medical school gave me every reason to test that belief. Many do not know this, but as a first-generation student from the lowest income quintile, I come from a background that represents less than 2.5% of medical students.
Today, I believe in persistence more than ever. I am not the most gifted, but I choose to be relentless.
Here’s to practicing medicine the way we need, spreading joy, and making the world a better place.
Dr. Seth Spicer, D.O.
