Alumni Q&A: Chris Le, MD 2013

Chris Le. Photo supplied.

What have you been up to since medical school?

I completed my family medicine residency in 2015 in Moncton, New Brunswick, through Dalhousie University. After that, I provided rural and urban locum coverage through the Fraser Valley region in British Columbia. Then in late 2018, I moved home to Edmonton and started caring for my own panel of patients in 2019.

I met the woman who would become my wife early in residence, though she lived in Vancouver! We dated long-distance for two long years, so that’s why I moved to B.C. right after residency. We decided to move to Edmonton after she finished her schooling, and now we have set roots in Edmonton.

Your class, the Bonesaws, graduated 10 years ago. Tell us a bit about how your class came together to celebrate this milestone.

Our class benefited from motivated people who wanted to bring us all together, namely Tara McGrath and Megan Manning, who came together with a vision and then recruited others to help! They ultimately planned a weekend retreat in Banff.

Is this the first reunion?

This was the first class-wide reunion. We had more than 70 classmates attend, plus partners and families. Altogether there were 172 people in attendance for the reunion!

What made the reunion memorable?

I was reminded of how much we like each other. Throughout the weekend and spread out in the venue, you could see different clusters of people catching up and spending time together. Even after we concluded the formal portions of our program, you could hear conversations inside and outside the banquet hall. Some people made arrangements to put their children to bed so they could come back to the party!

Another element that I appreciated was how far some of our classmates travelled to be at the reunion. The nature of our profession is that we may have to move for jobs, so seeing them make the trip back to Alberta was a big boost to our reunion.

Has your class kept in touch over 10 years or was the reunion the first time many people had seen each other in a long time?

There have been smaller gatherings within our class since we graduated from medical school, though this was the first class-wide reunion.

Are there plans for a future reunion?

We all agreed that 10 years is too long before we see each other again. There are ideas floating around for another reunion in five years, so we’ll see what our class comes up with then! There’s certainly an appetite to gather again.

To help commemorate your class milestone, you hosted a podcast where you interviewed your classmates. How did you come up with that idea?

I am surprised every once in a while by how much I enjoy hearing people’s stories, especially from fields that I’m less familiar with. So after the reunion was announced, I thought how much more interested I would be to hear stories from people I know within the profession that I work in, which is how this podcast was created. It’s a niche audience, and really I figured that at least my classmates would be interested to listen and maybe participate too.

How many episodes were created?

Altogether I uploaded 27 interviews before the reunion. There is a small batch in the works for a bonus season.

How long does each episode take to create?

Each recording typically took 20 to 30 minutes and the editing could take one to two hours. I learned a lot about the technical skills and stylistic decisions that go into a podcast. Each episode was its own iterative growth for me, and having a small project like this provided something different to look forward to during the week.

What would you tell the upcoming generations of classes about the value of keeping in touch with your classmates and colleagues?

You get what you put in. Our class was the largest one at the time, so it would be reasonable to think that there would be a weaker class-wide bond. Yet I found that many people showed up to events, which built relationships, which made us want to be together more, which then blossomed into robust class trips (Reading Week in Mexico), seasonal gatherings (winter and summer) and an epic graduation trip (with more than 60 classmates, plus partners, who spent a week in the Dominican Republic).

So my encouragement to upcoming classes is to make time for social connections during medical school. Being in medical school was a unique chapter in all our lives, especially with the relative abundance of time and few responsibilities, so the time together was unlike anything else we’ve ever had again.

In my interviews, none of the people regretted the time they spent with their classmates.

In fact, they almost always wished that they slowed down more during that window of time because responsibilities only grow as we progress in our careers.

So take hold and savour the opportunities to be together with your classmates!