Shadowing Practice: Life Lessons from A Heart Surgeon - U of T Research Showcase 2026 - Learn English Speaking with Video

It's a great pleasure for me to be here today, but the truth is, and I'll tell you this right now, you may or may not believe it,

where you're at, is these are going to be the best years of your life.

And if you're lucky, once in a while, you get to taste that sweet nectar of life, which is discovery.

Like once in a while, you actually get to find something small, and it's really cool because no one in the world has ever asked

that question in that way in the history of human civilization.

Like everything you're doing is new.

That's why it's so hard.

So I want to talk to you like student to student because I'm still a student, student of life, student of the heart.

The first thing is, you know, I used to sit there in these seats and I'd see these people talking.

I think, my gosh, they look like they're such, this guy's a heart surgeon.

He must be like a genius.

You must have like incredible technical dexterity, you know, a bladder of steel, a stomach of iron.

This is incredible.

But I'm just like you.

I'm pretty average intelligence, pretty average technical dexterity.

I just work really hard.

That's it.

I'm just like you.

I feel insecure sometimes.

Sometimes I'm really nervous, like I'm nervous now.

We're all the same.

I'll tell you why.

You know who gave this talk before me?

2025, there's a guy named Shafka Chavji.

And he invented the whole field of ex vivo lung transplantation.

And then in 2024, who gave the talk, it was a guy named Mohamed Mamdani.

When Temerdi Faculty of Medicine said, we got to integrate AI into like clinical medicine.

He was a person that does the entire thing.

Like he's in charge of all of that.

And then me.

So this is like imposter syndrome to the max, right?

To the ninth degree.

So what am I going to do?

I do what I always do.

I just show up.

But I want to tell you that the CV is kind of like your Instagram profile.

It's a highlight reel.

My life is always one step forward, two steps back, one step forward, three steps back.

I went to not one.

I went to four different high schools.

I was expelled from two of them.

And I went to work in a hotel, parking cars for a year.

There was an older guy named Gary.

I wore a graveyard shift for the one day.

Gary says to me, hey, Bobby, listen, I've been working here 30 years.

He says, you think that's 30 years of experience?

I said, I don't know.

He goes, I've just had one year of experience.

I've just done it 29 times over.

And that was Gary's way of saying, you've got to go do something with your life.

Like, you can't stay in the hotel.

So I said I'll do my PhD.

There's only four reasons why you do a graduate degree.

One is you love research, you love discovery, and you want to be a prof. Number two, you want to understand experimentation,

and then you want to go into industry.

Number three is you don't really know what you want to do with your life

and you don't really want to go into the real world yet.

That's fine too.

The fourth group goes and does a PhD or master's as a stepping stone to go into medicine.

I don't see any problem with that so I was in that fourth group.

Heart surgery is hard.

I've done 4,000 cases and they don't all do well.

And the first years where you're trying to establish your craft

and develop who you are as a surgeon are very tough years.

And not everyone makes it by the way.

And I had many long nights wondering like, I don't know, staring into the abyss thinking like, is this right for me?

Like can I actually do this?

Because when we have bad days or off days, I mean someone gets hurt or someone dies one dies.

And so those are tough situations to overcome.

But somehow I decided I burned the boats.

So I did heart surgery research.

I made it as a heart surgeon.

You know, one thing is you need a niche.

Everyone needs a niche.

The way that you do it that's unique to you.

And I trained in mitral surgery.

So it's a very specific part of heart surgery.

But when I got here, there were already like three mitral surgeons.

So who's going to send a mitral to me?

Nobody, right?

So I had to find, quickly had to find a new niche.

So I looked around and I noticed that there were a lot of drug users.

This is part of the opioid epidemic.

And the drug users were getting infections in the heart.

And the surgery was really complex and very high risk.

And no one really wanted to do these surgeries.

The patients, if I'm being honest, were not the type of patients that everyone's clamoring to operate on.

You've got HIV, Hep C, homelessness, schizophrenia.

I mean, it's not a pleasant patient population.

But give me all the IV drug use, I'll do them all.

So I cut my teeth operating and learning my craft, operating on these patients that no one wanted to operate on.

You know, they were set up to fail.

But they're human beings and deserve integrity and deserve respect.

I treat them with the same respect I treat all my patients.

And then lo and behold, 10 years later, endocarditis, which is the disease,

it's like skyrocketing because everyone's getting older and getting instrumentation and we still have the opioid epidemic.

So this area that I was sort of forced to develop on my own is now a growth field of my specialty.

So sometimes you get kind of lucky in life.

You just keep moving forward, you get lucky.

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You know, the story is not one of win after win after win.

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And I know that you, like me, are, you know, sometimes struggle.

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Sometimes, you know, your paper doesn't work, your experiments fifth time doesn't work.

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I get all that.

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I've been there.

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Been there, done that.

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So just keep persevering.

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Keep smiling.

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Keep moving forward.

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I have a little bit of wisdom because I've had a lot of life.

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And I have a lot of scar tissue.

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One of the things I'll tell you is sometimes you don't know what the next step is.

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I don't know what the next step is.

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In life sometimes I don't know like should I go here or there should I take this role or take this role.

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Sometimes in the surgery I don't know how to start.

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It's so complicated.

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We've been there four times already.

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Everything stuck down.

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I can't figure out how to start this operation.

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And there's a book called The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse, and it's a children's book.

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And there's this motley crew comes to a forest, and the boy says, the forest is so thick, and the boy says, I don't know where to go.

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And the horse says, well, do you know, can you take the next step?

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And he goes, yeah, I can take the next step.

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Just take that.

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So sometimes in life, you're at a crossroads, you're at an impasse.

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You know, you're going to find yourself in your work.

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Just keep moving forward.

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Just take the next step.

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Just take the action.

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Sometimes you're insecure or you're scared or you're sad.

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It's just not working.

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Just move.

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Action kills all that stuff. In surgery as well.

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Sometimes you take the next step and then the next step appears.

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And then the whole thing unravels.

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And you say, wow, I'm really glad I took that first step.

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When I first started as a heart surgeon, I was kind of a heart surgery researcher.

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And I did a lot of clinical outcomes research and I was reasonably successful.

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You get, you know, accolades and notoriety for your research.

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At about five years, I kind of plateaued.

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So I switched to education.

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When I became a heart surgeon, socially, it was like, you know, Me Too and Black Lives Matter.

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And sort of this whole social fabric was changing where we were kind of understanding

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that other people live different lives lives and they experience the same society

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or same community in a totally different way

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and now I'm actually shifting away from education

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and I've shifted towards leadership now I'm kind of I like leadership

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but I'm shifting again every five years I'm kind of shifting my focus

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and I'm now kind of understanding that

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if I operate on one patient I can change the course of

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that one patient's life but if I do something on social

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or if I expand my influence beyond the university or beyond the hospital I can influence you know people nationally or globally.

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You have to have some kind of unrealistic almost delusional confidence in yourself.

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Trust me if I was sitting next to you'd be like yeah like it's a nice kid but nothing special.

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Average intelligence, is above average looks, no I'm kidding.

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Average looks, I was pretty average in everything.

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I didn't excel at anything.

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I was like a gray man.

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I'd sit there, you'd be like, yeah, I think there was a guy in the class, I don't know, maybe.

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You know, like if I sat there where you are and I said, I'm gonna be the head of heart surgery, I'm gonna be this and that, and I'll probably be the mayor of the city, which is my next political ambition.

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You'll be like, honestly, I don't know who he's drinking.

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He isn't insane.

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But you have to believe that you can do it.

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Otherwise, no one else will.

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One of the best courses, most memorable, was not at U of T, was not at UBC.

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It was at a small community college at a night course, and it was on improv comedy.

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So improv comedy has no script.

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You sit on stage, and you feed off each other's energy.

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And there's a few rules to improv.

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Number one is you have to make the other person look good.

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Number two, when someone has a suggestion, you have to be positive.

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You have to accept it.

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And then maybe even add your own suggestion to that.

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So you'll be in improv comedy session will be like, hey, let's go to the zoo.

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And then everyone else says, yes, let's or yes, and yes.

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And it's Christmas and it's snowing.

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And then we're like, yeah, let's do that.

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Yes Let's has had a huge impact on my life.

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How that positive open-mindedness.

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About three years ago, I was, I finished operating and then someone said, hey, you want to go to the BMO Raptors box?

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I was like, I'm kind of tired.

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I could go home.

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Okay, let's go.

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So I went to the box, watch the Raptors game and then there's a bunch of suits chat chat chat chat

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but there's a kind of a younger guy

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and he was like in like a t-shirt and jeans

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and to be honest I just really enjoyed talking to him

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and we ended up his name is Greg we are talking

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chat chat chat he was what do you do for living

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and I said I do I do research and surgery

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and he goes you should get someone to give you money

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for your research I was like yeah like why you how so so Greg's like okay, just leave it with me.

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So he exchanged numbers and then he texts me.

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This is a true story.

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Like probably two weeks later, he's like, I got someone for you.

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Go meet this guy.

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So he goes, so his friend was a guy named Key Lu.

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Key Lu is an immigrant from Vietnam.

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Came here with like nothing.

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So I met him.

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He's not impressive.

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Like dirty shirt, kind of torn jeans chat for a bit

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so he says okay what do you want oh what do

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you mean goes how much money you want I go what

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are you talking about I go a professorship is half a

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million dollars for five years he goes no problem just send

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me the paperwork I texted Greg I was like is this guy for real

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and Greg says I told him to give me a million dollars

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so that's an example of yes let's so I'm I'm now the Shure General Contractors Professor in Infective Endocarditis.

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All because I went to Raptors Bay.

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I want you to be open-minded.

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Talk to someone who doesn't look like you.

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Talk to someone who doesn't come from your background.

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Talk to someone who maybe you wouldn't normally talk to.

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Open your mind.

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It will really, really enrich your life.

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And who knows, maybe you'll get a million dollars one day.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Life Lessons from A Heart Surgeon - U of T Research Showcase 2026 - Learn English Speaking with Video

What We’re Exploring: A Heart Surgeon’s Honest Chat

Useful Chunks & Collocations to Memorize

Your Shadowing Challenge: Practice Like a Pro

What is the Shadowing Technique?