2015-2016What is the most significant event, experience, or challenge you overcame this year and what did you learn from that experience? How is this experience influential in terms of how you see yourself today?
The most significant event my freshman year was not a specific date, it spanned over the whole year. Transitioning to college was difficult, not because of classes, homework, or tests, but because of being three hours from home and not knowing anyone else who was attending UC. I am quite introverted, so I was nervous to make new friends and have to talk to faculty and advisors about my worries and hardships. But, thanks to the close friends I have made and my awesome advisors, I have had a wonderful first year experience. I have become more confident in my abilities as a student, a friend, a future physician, and just as a human in general. I have been challenged and learned more about myself than I ever thought I would. For example, I learned more about my strengths and weaknesses, which will help me in the future to work more effectively. What significant relationships or connections have you developed this year? How have those relationships impacted your experience? I have been lucky to be accepted into a major that is extremely supportive and close-knit. I have befriended peers who will be in experiencing the same classes, hardships, and future that I am, which has helped me in both in the classroom and out, feeling more relaxed about what is yet to come. The faculty of medical sciences, my professors, and my advisors have helped me immensely in finding experiences that would be a good fit for me and helping me acclimate to the college life. Without all of these connections, I would have had a difficult first year What piece of advice would you like to give yourself as you prepare for the upcoming year, be that academically, personally, or both? If I had to give myself advice on the upcoming school year it would be to not pass up opportunities despite thinking that I will not be able to get them. You never know until you try, and even if the specific opportunity does not work out, it may lead to more down the road. What is at least one goal that you have set for yourself for the upcoming year? One of my goals for the upcoming school year is to spend more time shadowing physicians to be able to narrow down my thoughts on what kind of doctor I want to be. How will you use your gifts and talents to give back to the community and society? In this next year, I will use my gifts to give back to the community by continuing to volunteer in the emergency department, as well as volunteer around Cincinnati in events that will help young people become more interested in science. 2016-2017
What connections/patterns can you identify within your involvement and choices? What is the significance of the connections/patterns you noted?
Due to an increase in academic workload this past year, my time to devote to other activities has diminished. This decrease in time has forced me to become more selective about what I participate in. This has allowed me to reflect on which activities I truly enjoyed and which I was simply doing to find my space. Throughout my reflection, I noticed three main pillars common in each activity. 1) The activity must involve science. Although it sounds lame, science is something I truly love. Being able to explain and understand how things work is extremely interesting to me. If I know a day is going to involve science, it makes the day that much more exciting. 2) The activities usually involve guiding or teaching. Whether it is helping my friends study for the next exam or interacting with students in a Science Olympiad, being able to assist others through their challenges makes me feel as though I have made a difference. 3) My task must involve independence and responsibility. Although all volunteering, working, and studying positions are important to an end goal being met, I only feel that I have had an impact if my job is vital to the completion of the project. Having others rely upon me makes me feel accomplished. Recently, I have been thinking about career paths other than medicine. All three of these necessary attributes, however, prove that medicine is the place for me. How have your thoughts about who you are and what you want to do changed or evolved this year? How will that inform your next steps? Having solidified that I definitely want to have a career in medicine, I then began thinking what facet of medicine I want to be involved in. My time in the lab has shown me that discovering the future of treatments is just as important and interesting to me as dispensing current treatments. This has opened up the option of pursuing an MD/PhD. Simply growing up has shown me that although I would like to be able to devote all of my time to my career, it is not feasible to have a family and work 80 hours a week. I am not yet sure how this realization will affect my final decision, but for now it is stored in the back of my mind. Finally, my previous reflection shows that a challenging field where I can guide others toward their goals would be best for me. 2017-2018
For pre-professional students, junior year is always packed with decisions, tests, and paperwork. For those who know the path they wish to take, the path is clear. For others, like me, who have not yet made that decision, the process can be all the more stressful. Although I came into college as a pre-med student, my experiences in the classroom and in my lab at Cincinnati Children’s continually showed me how intriguing medical research can be.
I chose a career path in medicine for many reasons, the main four being the science background, autonomy, problem solving, and helping others. In the past year, I have had the opportunity to take a more active role in my lab work at Children’s. My lab focuses on the development of the digestive and respiratory systems from conception up until a fully-functioning adult organism. By elucidating the delicate orchestration of the developmental cascades that produce healthy digestive and respiratory systems, we can then apply this knowledge to diagnostic techniques, treatment options, and possibly tissue and organ engineering for patients who do not have fully functioning organs. In the past, I worked on other’s projects in the lab but this past year and this upcoming year I have the opportunity to have my own project, from start to finish. Being independent and responsible for my own project has showed me that although medicine may have fit my four necessary job elements, it is not the only profession to do so. With research, the work not only has a scientific background, it is applying previously known data to discover new facts about the world around us. For my project, I got to pick the hypothesis being tested, the experiments to test it, and every day I went in I got to choose what to do for the day. In medicine, the problem solving consists of using information given by the patients to solve what illness they may have and then collaborating with the patient to find the treatment plan that will work best for them. However, all of this is done using previously known information to diagnose only one patient. In research, the problem solving is focused on discovering new information that can then be broadly applied to many other areas of research and medicine. In both cases, I will be helping the community around me. Because of this discovery that both medicine and research include a scientific background, autonomy, problem solving, and helping others and that I enjoy both, my junior year has been filled with a constant internal dialogue of which to choose. I felt that, if I gave up research for medicine, I would feel that my work was only helping a select few with access to my services and that I was not doing all I could to actually cure these patients rather than just treat them. But if I gave up medicine for research, I would lose the human side of health care and not be able to directly see the impact my work is having on the world. I felt that I could not give either up. After many long discussions with my family, my academic advisors, my co-workers in the lab, and my peers, I decided to pursue an MD/PhD degree. Because I did not want to make this decision lightly, I chose to take a gap-year to ensure that this path is right for me. After all, an eight-year commitment is not a decision to be made on a whim. For this next year, my goals are to complete my undergraduate degree, continue my independent project in the lab with the hopes of a first authorship, and work on making myself a competitive applicant for MD/PhD programs. |