October 28, 2022
“It’s what you build together” — Matthew Santos, M.D. ’14 addresses Honors Convocation
Matthew Santos, M.D. ’14 returned to Providence College as the featured speaker at the 2022 Honors Convocation. An ophthalmologist who serves as chief of ophthalmic trauma at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Santos eloquently described the ways in which his PC education, especially his Honors Program experiences, prepared him for success as a physician. Speaking directly to current Honors Program students, he expressed his hope that they gain as much from “both providence divine and Providence our beloved school” as he did.
Good evening, everyone, my name is Matthew Santos. I am a native Rhode Islander and a graduate of the Providence College Honors Program from 2014. Thank you so much to all of you for being here this evening. Thank you to Dr. Suzanne Fournier and Dr. Stephen Lynch for having me back to this convocation. I remember fondly coming to these dinners each fall semester in college, and it is a surreal honor to be back here speaking to you all.
Upon graduation from Providence College, I went on to medical school at the Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University and graduated in 2018. I completed my residency training in ophthalmology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis this past summer, where I now serve as the chief of ophthalmic trauma for this year. In this teaching position, I staff our emergency department and in-hospital consults, staff eye trauma surgeries, cataract surgeries, and teach a series of didactics throughout the year.
To the new freshmen in this room today, congratulations. You find yourselves among a gifted group of individuals, truly the crown jewel of this excellent university. To the rest of you in the room, welcome back to another year at home. Seniors in the room: Don’t worry. Don’t mind that clock ticking down on this last year. The future is scary, but you’re ready. That readiness, that talent and ability, is something you all share in this room. If you’re a member of this Honors Program, you certainly had other exceptional choices for where to pursue your undergraduate studies. The same patterns of success that brought you here will continue to bring you far.
For me, this is catharsis: the chance to reflect and look back on what four years of a PC Honors Program education meant to me. To sift through my own fond memories with a 10-year reunion quickly approaching. Thankfully, there’s a fair amount of history there. In my first year of the Development of Western Civilization Program, our professors asked us to write a weekly paper. The assignment was a little vague, but impactful at the time: to write 1-2 page reflection attempting to relate to our readings in a personal way. It created quite the paper trail of my intellectual musings from freshman year of college.
And in this way, to prepare for this evening and unpack the impact of the honors program, I did what this institution taught me to do — went back to the primary sources, to read through those thoughts and feelings of mine from 12 years ago. There was the essay attempting to relate to the battlefield of the Iliad, with Achilles weeping over the death of his cousin Patroclus, and me attempting to think about the rage and sadness I would feel at the loss of my own brother, my best friend. There was another talking about the leadership strategies of Machiavelli and whether the same rules of leadership applied in my own time as a Boy Scout or lacrosse player. Spoiler alert: These leadership styles were very different. A good Boy Scout should probably not be Machiavellian.
Some of these essays of mine weren’t great. In fact there was surely a paragraph or two put there to fill up space, some words that were really only there to take that 1–2 page paper solidly to that second page. I did not find the inspiration I was looking for.
So, freshman year behind us, I moved on to the sophomore folder. Things looked a little different. Each week had a list of questions, questions posed to us about the week’s readings. And under each question were some bullet-point thoughts I had written, fragments of ideas, quoted passages which related to those thoughts. I was excited to look back at the “Four Quartets” document, my favorite poem from my time in Civ. I would be hard pressed to remember a lot of the lines and themes from that work, but I remember the bit about “In my end is my beginning.” I referenced that line a few times in my residency application personal statement to firmly establish myself as a huge nerd from the get-go. I remember the treatment of memory and the idea that the past persists in our present and future. That’s about it on the specifics, if I’m being honest. But I remember the way the Four Quartets made me feel; that it had some connotation of optimism among the other gloomy writings in the post-World War I era that we learned about that year. Still, these fragmented bullet-point brainstorms didn’t capture the magic I felt when taking Civ, either. They got closer.
Here’s about the time, digging through an old documents folder, that I realized what was missing — what brought the bullet points into cohesion and clarity, gave them life. I was missing my classmates. I was missing my professors, Dr. Fournier, Dr. Lynch, Father David Stokes, and Father Joseph Torchia. Those intimate tables where you could sit across from someone with a completely different life from yours, completely different from these ancient writers and thinkers, and all feel something, think something profoundly meaningful. The magic of Civ can’t be captured in the paper trail I still have saved on my laptop (thoughts and prayers to my hard drive). It’s felt by the people around you, those you’re sharing this meal with today, by your seminar classmates who inspire, challenge, and bring the best out of you.
In fact, I should remember that the Development of Western Civilization Program taught me that you lose something if you measure life in coffee spoons or measure a collegiate experience in the text of your old essays and papers. It comes from something a little harder to quantify, the impact of the people around you. This community.
Surely in my young medical career, there are many coffee spoons by which my training could be measured. There was an application, an acceptance, exams literally numbered Step 1, Step 2, and Step 3. For residency, another application and another acceptance. Meticulous logs of the number of surgeries performed to demonstrate my capability and prowess. But these in steps and in the sheets of a textbook does not live what gives meaning in medicine. It’s in the patients we serve.
There was the veteran, a widower, who had stopped taking care of himself and was losing his independence from visually debilitating cataracts. After his first surgery, he said to me, “If Brenda could see how dirty the windows had gotten, she would be mortified.” He just couldn’t see how dirty they were. He proudly described going through two jumbo paper towel rolls and large bottle of Windex to clean it all up. Not the regular paper towels, the JUMBO ones.
There was the monocular patient, having lost one eye to a trauma, with a cataract blocking his vision in his one remaining eye. He told me one week after cataract surgery that it was the first time he’d seen himself in a mirror in years; the first time in years he’d used a toilet to urinate instead of a bottle.
Those are the stories that are impactful, keep me coming back each day, and bring joy in teaching the next generation of eye surgeons to share in these moments.
Back to preparing this address: I stepped away from the essays and assignments and reflections, back in the depths of my old documents folder, and there were two other primary sources that I found, potentially of some import. One was the welcome speech I gave as a sophomore to the future PC Class of 2016, here at PC for their accepted students day.
That sophomore version of myself felt what made PC special and what made it home. It was the people and the community that gave the thoughts and ideas from the classroom their meaning and purpose in the here and now. Some of those memories that I had forgotten about made me smile to think back on them: that the Ray Dining hall staff used to encourage me to eat sweet potatoes because they’re good for me. That they used to say, “You look handsome today,” always on the times when I was having a bad day. That they always seemed to be able to tell. That around a small table of my Honors Foundation of Theology course, Dr. Aurelie Hagstrom used to let me bring a buffalo chicken wrap from the café across from Siena Hall and always had a pot of coffee on she would share with us for each class. My biology professors used to cycle around Slavin Center the night before a big exam, sitting with studying students to give last-minute advice. These instances reminded me that a little attention to detail can go a long way in making someone feel cared for.
When I first started in Civ, I had that nasty habit of thinking what I said was the “right” interpretation of things. It made sense to me, so it must make sense to everyone else. Time and time again, though, I had my mind changed or thinking broadened by just listening to the brilliant people around me.
Matthew Santos, M.D. ’14
There was one more address that I found in the documents, a welcome speech for an Honors Program panel on accepted students day. (Turns out I gave a lot of speeches in college — hopefully tonight’s performance is a solid throwback more than me being washed-up).
In this speech to the prospective honors students, I conveyed a mix of immense gratitude and sweet sadness — both baked within the waning days of my college career. Reflecting on my time in the Honors Program, I once again harped on how sitting at a small table with my classmates brought out the best in us. How it taught us to be good communicators mostly by being good listeners. When I first started in Civ, I had that nasty habit of thinking what I said was the “right” interpretation of things. It made sense to me, so it must make sense to everyone else. Time and time again, though, I had my mind changed or thinking broadened by just listening to the brilliant people around me. In this speech, too, I talked about my medical school interview and the notion that medicine is the perfect marriage of science and humanism. The Honors Program here bolstered that humanism to be my biggest strength as a physician.
As a first-year ophthalmology resident, I saw a patient in the surgical ICU one day after having a stent placed in his carotid artery to correct critical narrowing of it. Soon after the procedure, he had suffered visual field loss in one eye, with this carotid stent flicking off a clot that blocked a blood vessel in his eye. As I told his family what had happened, I sensed an unease settling over them. There was a long pause, and I could feel their anxiety. I told them: I don’t want you to have regrets over having this procedure. Truthfully, he needed it to prevent something more life-threatening. His vascular surgery team had done what was right, and this was one of the risks of this procedure. How the eye would heal would depend only time, and we would be there every step of the way. Nearly instantly, the worry seemed to melt from them.
In this encounter, I had no treatment to offer, no medicine or surgery to correct what had happened. All I had was doctoring — that ability to offer empathy, to not just do something, but stand there and be present for that patient. To help that vascular surgeon maintain trust as well, after doing an indicated procedure with an undesired side effect. All these soft skills, I learned here. That intuitive sense and range of empathy built around a seminar table, listening and learning with people smarter than you and diving into the brilliant works of these Western thinkers.
For me, this is catharsis. The ability to wade back through the dusty documents folder of 2010-2014. The reminder that the wisdom gained from the Honors Program does not live in those documents, those measured coffee spoons, but in the interactions with my classmates and professors, how we molded each other. Like the Four Quartets might teach you, it’s not just the “Evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album).” It’s in a “further union, a deeper communion” made by common experience, that generations of students in this program have found, seeking growth in themselves and each other. It’s what you all build together.
I hope for you, this gathering is catharsis too. Continue to work hard and take advantage of all the opportunities set before you. Don’t get me wrong, good grades and success on your assignments will take you far. But remember that the joy you’ll retain most from your time here is from each other. Take care of each other. Seek help when you need it, help others when you have the time and energy to do so. And I hope that you gain as much guidance from providence as I did in my time here, both providence divine and Providence our beloved school. Thanks very much for your time and attention — my best wishes to you all.
