Columnist
University of Illinois College of Medicine
Emilia Calvaresi grew up in Chicago, IL, and in 2009 completed a BS in biochemistry and cell biology and a BA in English from Rice University in Houston, TX. Then, deciding to delay the onset of entering the "real world" indefinitely, she chose to pursue the MD/PhD career track, matriculating to the UIUC Medical Scholars Program (MSP) in 2009. She is currently pursuing both an MD and a PhD in biochemistry.
MD/PhD: Becoming a Doctor-Doctor
This column explores the MD/PhD career track from a current trainee’s perspective, including the benefits and challenges of pursuing two doctoral degrees simultaneously, time management and life balance, and post-graduation training and career opportunities.
It’s hard to say what motivates my fellow MD/PhD trainees to pursue the physician-scientist career track. In some ways, we’re a masochistic group, voluntarily choosing to spend seven to 10 years in the prime of our lives completing two doctoral degrees instead of one, then spending another four to eight years or more in residency, research residency, postdoctoral and possibly fellowship training before seeking a “real” job. Even for those of us who started our …
We had our white coat ceremony on the third day of medical school. Each student was given a rose to give to someone who helped during their journey to medical school. As soon as we started school, we had lectures to attend, books to read and frequent tests to study for. Everything started off with a bang! Before we knew it, we were nose deep in books, and we quickly forgot what life was like …
Here was a 45-year-old Type 1 diabetic who presented to the emergency department in a near coma with diabetic ketoacidosis. The diagnosis seemed clear as day, with some of the classic presenting signs: polyuria, polydipsia, hyperglycemia, high anion gap, low serum bicarbonate and presence of ketones in the urine. She was admitted and treated appropriately. Once she was stabilized, the human interaction and history-taking began, which proved to be far more convoluted. She thoroughly explained …
Medicine is rapidly evolving: new drugs, new devices and new techniques are constantly introduced to improve patient care. And yet, despite these many innovative advances, there are some mainstays of modern medicine that are thousands of years old and have withstood the test of time. Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine that was developed in China approximately 4,000 years ago. Its intended purpose was to restore the body’s inner balance by placing needles at …
It is powerful timing that I write the first entry for this column—a tribute to my mother—on Sept. 1, 2013. Today, my Ammachi (my maternal grandmother) passed away. Seeing those words is still a fresh wound, forcing me to externalize a reality that my heart and my mind have yet to come to terms with. This is the woman who helped to raise my two siblings and me; who raised my mother and her two siblings as …
As our friends finish undergrad, apply for jobs, settle down and develop a lifestyle, we are preparing for the next standardized exam, writing that catchy personal statement and requesting another set of recommendation letters on our journey towards residency. Although medicine is not for everyone, for whom it is, it likely is the only choice. After completing three years of medical school, the time finally comes to choose what we will do for the rest …
Pharmacology is over. I sit in my house with the post-test buzz still ringing in my ear amid a rhythmic background of raindrops striking windowsills and cars sliding past outside. I doze, and the rain conjures afternoons in Borgne when the clinic visitors had slowed to a drip after the morning hubbub. The end of summer happened fast. At times I have to catch myself to remember that I am back in Rochester since the …
Last night I had one of those horrible nights where bacteria- and virus-laden nonsense raced through my head as I lay in bed, in powerful mockery of my lame attempts at meditation and mind-clearing. Once an hour this was punctuated by becoming fully awake, getting up, and then laying down once again to the same as soon as my head hit the pillow. I’ve been trying to do everything right, too: yoga, running, studying, dinner …
Why do I want to become a general surgeon? The real question is why wouldn’t I want to become a general surgeon? I enjoy the operating room, I find the cases interesting, and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. Even more than all the usual reasons, I feel like there’s something so unique about surgery that is almost indescribable. Being a surgeon is unlike any other career: you get to operate on people. You improve and …
For 24 years I lived in Cambridge, Mass. with or near my parents. I was in high school when my maternal grandfather died, and I remember when my mom and brother met me at a dress rehearsal one evening to share the bad news. I was a few blocks away, living at Harvard summer school, when my dad was briefly hospitalized with an ulcer. I lived just one zip code over when my brother was …
When my dad went on medication for hypertension—despite his near-religious routine of daily running and a diet rich in fish and vegetables—I stopped buying cheese, reduced the amount of soy sauce in my stir-fries, and gave up my weekly jars of pickles. Studying the mechanisms of hypertension during our renal theme last year—learning how the kidney adjusts to higher levels of sodium over time—only increased my determination to follow a low-salt diet. All this until …
[ca_audio url=”http://in-training.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/03-Young-and-Beautiful-1.mp3″ width=”500″ height=”27″ css_class=”codeart-google-mp3-player” autoplay=”false”] We’re all familiar with those epidemiology pie charts that preface most of our pathology lectures. They’re the slides that everyone tunes out and gleefully skip over when reviewing for the exam, minus the few pertinent buzzwords: risk factors, mean age, gender and common symptoms. After all, “think horses, not zebras” is one of the most famous adages in medicine and rightfully so, because biology operates on efficient systems in …
Columnist
University of Alabama School of Medicine
Jennifer Yang attends medical school at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in the Class of 2016. She is from San Diego, CA and did her undergrad at UC Berkeley studying neurobiology and English. To keep her sanity intact during school, she distracts herself with music, food, reddit, and way too many TV shows. She firmly believes that laughter really is the best medicine.
I'm No Superman
Many of us go into med school with big visions for bettering modern medicine, but as we go through this journey, we realize that there is still a long way to go, and we can't do it all alone. This column is not meant to be extremely profound or didactic but simply a reflection on the what it means to stay human in midst of society's expectations and our own expectations.
