It's taken a long time for me to be able to leave a job without feeling like a failure.
But I did.
I just quit my job.
It paid very well. It was suffocating and unfulfilling.
I jumped with no safety net. I'm not sure where I'm going to land.
And I feel ten pounds lighter.
Anthony Chin-Quee, MD
1,264 posts
Memoir Author. Television Writer. Retired Surgeon. “I Can’t Save You” is available NOW! Order at the link below, or wherever you get your books!
- I received many “Thinking of you” and “I wish I knew how to help” texts from white allies this week. I’ve ignored most of them. I needed to feel my rage, my crisis of faith in all of you. But as my birthright burden dictates, I’m once again ready to continue your education. 1/
- Went to a doctor's appt this week and, as usual, didn't announce myself as a doc. I haven't been seen in an academic center in a while, so I was surprised to be seen first by a resident. She was kind, knowledgable, and had mastered the 'eye-contact-with-pt-while-typing' trick. 1/
- Alright, #medtwitter. Time for your #SundayService. My residency program accepted two new trainees a year. In 2011, one was a blond, blue-eyed, corn-fed son of the Midwest. The other was me. 1/
- So I’m black. I’m reminded of it every day. To be black is to endure the death of your humanity by a thousand paper cuts. So when a white man cut in front of me in the checkout line yesterday, I found myself enraged by the questions I had to ask myself before I could react. 1/
- Replying to @CQ__MDI doubt I'll hear back from her, seeing as her work is all consuming. But if paying forward some kindness helped buoy her at least a little bit, I know that I'll smile a bit bigger during these holidays. Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
- Replying to @CQ__MDBut don’t ever tell me that you feel helpless in this. Ever. Those born into every shade of power are never helpless.
- Just spent a night catching up with an old friend from med school. I’ve put on a few pounds, he’s lost a few hairs from the top of his head, and we both look tired no matter the time of day. "What's your book about?" He asked. "It's about us." #medtwitter 1/
- Replying to @CQ__MDTransforming my pain into advocacy has been a difficult process. Teaching white people how to reckon with their culpability in inequality, has been a part of that. I don't love it, but I know it's necessary for the ones who follow. I hope you'll join me. And that's my sermon.
- Met a cool dude recently who seemed like friend material, so I slipped into his DMs and asked him out on a friendship date. I spent a week fretting over what jacket I’d wear, and whether or not I was actually cool because dates are scary. Making friends in your late 30s is weird.
- Replying to @CQ__MDYou must risk losing social capital amongst fellow white folk for openly challenging your race-specific power. In situations where you're being treated with the grace that a black person wouldn't receive, you must risk demanding our consequences for yourself #MyWhitePrivilege 7/
- Replying to @CQ__MDSo what do you do about your racism? You need to do the uncomfortable, unnatural work of giving up power. And you have to do it in the spaces where black people don’t reside. 6/
- In my darkest days of training, I wished for a doctor’s honest account: one where an author explored the emotional terrorism of residency without the typical doctorly concern of "looking good". That book didn’t exist, so I wrote it. I Can’t Save You arrives in 2022!
- Replying to @CQ__MDBecause you have it. You were born into it. No matter how many social media posts you write, or activist groups you join, or black people you marry, or mixed kids you have, you can not give it away. You can’t shed it into your external, tangible accomplishments. 3/


