Contributing Writer
Hadhramout University College of Medicine
Ahmed Ben Dohman is a fifth-year medical student at Hadhramout University College of Medicine. He is committed to excellence in his studies and is always seeking new ways to advance his skills and knowledge in the field of medicine.
In his free time, Ahmed enjoys exploring new topics and staying intellectually engaged through reading and other thought-provoking activities. He is also an avid chess player and enjoys solving puzzles such as Sudoku and Rubik's cubes, which he believes help keep his mind sharp and focused.
As a Muslim living in a city with a hot and humid climate, I can attest that when it’s time to break my fast, water is the only thing on my mind. Drinking water seems to immediately quench my thirst. But does this mean that the water is absorbed from my stomach into the bloodstream at the exact moment of consumption?
In my second year of medical school, amidst the frequent exams and impending doom of third year rotations, I would often look forward to Tuesday nights. On these nights, students and residents would come together to play pick-up basketball at a local gym, removed from the stresses of medical school.
My Grandmother never once told me how / she feels about dying.
Dance has always been a medium for me to express my emotions. It makes me feel alive and helps me process my experiences, including that with imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome has been described as feelings of self-doubt, especially in high achieving people
Thinking. We do it all the time, from the most minute choices to the most momentous decisions. Part and parcel of our daily lives, thought is inextricable from how we see, feel and believe. But how often do we take the time to reflect? To ruminate on our experiences and flesh out how dynamically we are molded by them?
I went to college in Canada, and whenever I’d think about medical school, I’d romanticize how great moving to the United States would be in terms of opportunities and career development. However, in college, I was in a romantic relationship when I applied to medical schools in the U.S., and with that, I was very cognizant that I’d have to be in a long-distance relationship for at least four years…
As I took my shirt off this morning to shower, I noticed my teres major muscle in the mirror — or more precisely, I identified it for the first time.
Like many medical students, I was vastly underprepared for the emotional turmoil that the nature of the third year of medical school can create.
The interviewer smiled, gave a vague answer and followed it with a diatribe about how present-day residents have it so “easy.” How his generation had to “walk through feet and feet of snow” to get to work and how work hour restrictions did not exist. Caught off guard, I wondered what sparked such an emotional response to a common interview question.
Blue, white, red, yellow, pink, brown. These are the colors of the ties and strips of fabric around the scrub pants and tops indicating their size. At the start of medical school, I would squeeze into a red top and red pants: these were the larges.
My sister is nine years older than I am. We went to different high schools and currently live over 500 miles apart.
I came across a photo on social media of some classmates that appeared almost identical to another one I had seen months ago — beaming medical students crowded together against a brick wall of a campus apartment. Déjà vu. But there was one difference. Nearly all the students in this picture were white, whereas all the students in the older picture were non-white.
Contributing Writer
Penn State College of Medicine
Mariam Shalaby is a third year medical student at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, PA class of 2023. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with a Bachelor of Philosophy in music and a Bachelor of Science in natural sciences. She enjoys spending time others, playing musical instruments, and trying new foods in her free time. After graduating medical school, Mariam would like to pursue a career at the intersection of medicine and public health.
