For chiropractic students
So you are on the path…
Congratulations on your decision to become a chiropractor. We enjoy a profession with integrity, with passion, and with an understanding of—and more importantly, a knowing of—the incredible power of the human body. We enjoy a profession which allows incredible lifestyle choices: my chiropractor, Dr. Beverly Dalby, sees 40 patients a week and scuba dives the first four hours of each day, and one of my mentors, Dr. Mike Robb, sees several hundred patients in his six-day work week. There are DCs who spend a few hours with patients and most with their families, and DCs who own large clinics and employ dozens of other doctors but choose not to work with any patients. Whatever the design of their work week and business, all these doctors know one thing—they are working in one of the most powerful healing modalities on the planet, which holds the human body in high esteem and honors its innate intelligence.
Deciding what to share with you is hard: there are so many things to say and to share with a chiropractic student, whether you are at the start of your schooling, in the middle, in clinic, or just considering it as a career. In addition, everyone is different, and the things I would have wanted to know sooner, the most useful things I heard or experienced, may have little meaning for you.
What I can say is that chiropractic college—which is today, for all intents and purposes, a medical school curriculum—can feel like a long and challenging road, with many long nights and many moments where you forget why you chose this path to begin with. My class began with more than 80 students, and I graduated with fewer than 30. Those 30, however, are amazing men and women who kept the course and who will make powerful differences in their patients’ lives.
I heard two particularly important things at the start of my schooling which I want you to hear as well. The first was “A students teach, and B students work for C students.” This comment was not intended to encourage me to be a poor student, but to really realize and understand that there are more important things to learn than the chemical structure of tryptophan. School can only teach you so much, and if you’re lucky you are at a school where there is a respect for and emphasis on adjusting. If you want to be successful, get to every adjusting seminar you can; set up at every class break; practice after school and on weekends, and go to every DCs office you can and learn about everything in that office—even if you are seeing what you don’t want, there is tremendous value in that.
The other valuable thing I heard was something that B.J. Palmer told his students the first day of classes: “You will spend your career forgetting all the things you will spend the next few years learning.” This communicated to me the importance and power of the adjustment, and the ease of getting myself all wrapped up in the ego of being a doctor, and the basic sciences, and trying to “figure out” the human body. The human body does not need to be “figured out”, and neither does the adjustment. As Gonstead said, “Find it, accept it where you find it, fix it, then leave it alone.”
The most important experience I had was one I will never forget, and I beg you to seek it. Early in my second trimester a classmate of mine, Dr. Kristy Zinnes, came up to me on a break and said her stomach hurt, and that she suffered chronically acidity. She asked me to check her out, and so we went to the back of the class where the adjusting table was. As we chatted, I checked her out using the skills I had started using in clubs just three months earlier, and it seemed her sacrum was out. As we continued talking I set her up for a BP sacrum, and ka-chunk it went—and went deep. I was scared! I had never really moved a sacrum before, let alone such a deep adjustment: it’s a good thing I was distracted by the conversation so I could let my body do what I had been training it to do without over-thinking! For a second I thought I had broken her, and she just said “Wow!” while I tried to summon up a poker face. We finished our chat and went back to our seats, and on the next break she came to me, and told me that her stomach hadn’t felt that good in years. It changed the entire experience of schooling for me and gave me an invaluable reference point for those long nights studying for finals and boards. That, my friends, is the power of the adjustment—and it is something that is under-emphasized, under-valued, and under-experienced by chiropractic students. Once you’ve had that experience, you no longer need to believe you’ve made the right career choice, or to have faith in chiropractic—you know it, and you can own it.
Chiropractic requires great levels of Mastery—from the coursework, to the board exams, to clinic, to transitioning into practice and running a successful one. Below are links to the the outlines of a few of the talks I give on mastery, excellence, success in school and practice, and transition. You are welcome to read through the material, and to contact me for support or guidance at any time. Please respect the copyright laws and the work I’ve put into these and do not use this material inappropriately.
With gratitude, well-wishes, and all my blessings,
Dr. Matthew
