Education Questions Flashcards
Why did you choose your undergraduate major?
I am fascinated by the puzzle of the brain. I was initially drawn to it because of my own experience, but I found it to be so much more than I expected. I was pretty amazed by how much more there is to find out about the brain and in how many ways we can study it. So, I was able to take classes on how the brain evolved, on how the brain communicates to produce function and how the brain develops. I am very interested in the link between the physical of the brain and producing thought and complex consciousness and that’s why one of my favorite classes at Middlebury.
How have you tried to achieve breadth in your undergraduate curriculum?
Yes – I think coming from a liberal arts school like Middlebury has allowed me to explore a ton of different disciplines. I really enjoyed exploring before I decided what I wanted to do. Even the approach to neuroscience was very multidisciplinary like I said you have to take one philosophy class, but you can also take classes in psychology and in neuroscience in many different areas. One downside of all of this breadth is that I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted with data science in terms of gaining hard skills.
How has your undergraduate research experience, if any, better prepared you for a medical career?
- Breadth of Research
I think I have been able to do research in a variety of fields actually, including doing research in multiple ways using data science to solve medical and scientific questions. I really want to incorporate the data science approach into my future research. - Research – Thomas De Raedt
- Gave me a good understanding for how slow and difficult and messy scientific research can be.
I worked in a lab at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, which I really enjoyed, and it taught me a lot about how to approach and solve scientific questions. How fun and unpredictable but also tedious and frustrating it come up with hypotheses and test them yourself. It gave me a really good understanding of how slow but rewarding actual scientific advancement is. It is painful at times, but it is our best way of learning more about the world.
- Gave me a good appreciation for the difficulty of applying drugs to different ailments.
It gave me a really rich appreciation for the complexity of human biology and allowed me to engage in a hands-on way with complex biological processes. We were trying to find a new drug target for high grade glioma brain tumors and we were looking at a chart of 50 possible targets and each interacts with each other. Each person can have different interactions between these different segments.
How have the jobs, volunteer opportunities, or extracurricular experiences that you have had better prepared you for the responsibilities of being a physician?
- Working with Dr. Gardner – Taught me how important communication and empathy is
I unfortunately have not been able to get as much as experience as I wanted to in an actual clinical setting. But I was able to spend a whole summer at NYU with a physician seeing her handle these patients. I think this really taught me about how difficult it is, I think when I was being treated, I thought of these people as heroes and I stand by that, but I didn’t see how difficult it is behind the scenes. You’re constantly juggling different, it’s also difficult physically as you spend the whole day walking from center to center seeing patients, spending the whole day on your feet. I remember getting home and being like wow that was incredibly hard and my feet ached. - One Life
- Taught me a lot about medical advocacy actually
- Explaining why a disorder is important, explaining funding disparities
- Hearing directly from patients about what doctors could provide them and what they couldn’t like the financial hardship of a pediatric cancer diagnosis. - Excited to see more about a vaccine clinic called Betances for underserved communities on the lower east side. Hands-on experience from that.
- Helping people schedule appointments
How do you envision using your medical education?
Academic Medicine
I am very interested in academic medicine so I really want to be doing research and learning more about my field as I go along. So, I want to see as many patients as I can but also be learning more about the specific topic and become an expert as I go along.
Strong Interest in the Brain and Strong Interest in Children
I am not sure exactly what I want to go into to be honest, but I am obviously very interested in the brain and I love working with children. I also, as I have mentioned, hold a strong interest in pursuing applications of artificial intelligence as applied to medicine so I want my research to have a big data aspect. I want to find ways to more effectively combine artificial intelligence with clinicians in a more symbiotic relationship where it helps clinicians be better at their jobs.
Education
-I’d also like to teach and do advocacy work on behalf of the patients that I treat.
Favorite Class?
1. Consciousness I loved consciousness class I took because it was so unlike a lot of the other science classes I took. Because we really don’t have a scientific way at the moment to investigate consciousness, I really enjoyed learning about the different theories and I found it to be super imaginative and exciting. I am very interested in the link between the physical of the brain and producing thought and complex consciousness and that’s why one of my favorite classes at Middlebury.
I also really loved all of the data science classes I took obviously and I love how we would take random data sets from sports and movies and pop culture and generate insight and visualizations.
