Columnist Emeritus and in-Training Staff Member
Loma Linda University Medical Center
A Taste Of Your Own Medicine is a column that gives you a taste of medicine. It focuses on important and interesting topics relating to medicine and being a medical student.
Valentina is a general surgery resident at Loma Linda University Medical Center. She graduated from University of California, Irvine School of Medicine.
Buckle up — the interview trail for residency is a bumpy ride. It is time consuming, costly and stressful. There are things you should know beforehand so it won’t be so overwhelming. First things first, submit your ERAS application. It’s crickets after that. Then, a barrage of emails come soliciting you for an interview spot. Depending on the specialty and program you apply to, there may only be two or three interview dates offered. You …
How do you find a balance in medical school? “There is no balance,” she said. This was not what I wanted to hear. We were talking about remaining competitive in medical school without giving up a social life. This administrator is an MD and has a PhD in education; she knows what she’s saying. She explained how her eight-year-old gets a few hours after work, but then she often sacrifices sleep to stay on top …
Ever since my siblings and I were in elementary school, my mother’s pearls have been circulating in our minds. For a while I may have thought there were no new pearls to be shared, but my mom continues to surprise us with hidden gems of wealth, right at the moments we happen to need them. I heard this particular pearl recently when venting my frustrations about difficult people to my mother. I later learned it …
It feels like we have been in medical school forever, and the neverending saga continues this spring. Perhaps first semester was a gauntlet of rough rotations and long calls, and now you’re counting on some R&R in the upcoming months. Or maybe, like me, you have already completed the clerkships that interested you, and you’ve found yourself low on enthusiasm for the leftovers. Perhaps your semester is back-loaded, and you’re staring down the barrel of …
I recently sat in on a luncheon with a few other current MD/PhD students as we chatted with, and fielded questions from, half a dozen applicants to our program. This brought back a multitude of memories from my own admissions season five years ago. I’ve also had plenty of experiences in the past few years interacting with talented undergraduates who are considering applying to MD/PhD programs, so I’d like to share some reflections on my process, …
I read an interesting article this weekend entitled “Why Nutrition Is So Confusing” that described what all med students know: nutrition data is largely inconclusive, often contradictory, and falls short of strong claims that would make for truly useful recommendations. Trials are often done for a few years and then extrapolate to decades or, conversely, populations are followed for decades and then analysts try to pull out a few recommendations. Although many of us philosophically favor diet …
Everyone knows that the hard work, sleepless nights and early mornings fueled by gratuitous amounts of coffee don’t end after you graduate medical school. Instead, you are force-fed an even larger dose of the same as you navigate your first year of residency. The very prospect can spark anxiety and concern in even the most confident. Luckily, the wisdom of those who have gone before is there to prove that it won’t be as terrible …
We have all asked that question to someone at some point. If you are currently in medical school, chances are you aced your way through high school. But that was high school, where you could have solved a bunch of exam papers from the previous years and skimmed through chapter summaries weeks before GCE Advanced level exams and still pulled out an A. Sadly, those days are over and you have been thrown into a rather massive pool of …
It’s 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night, and you’re finally leaving the library, ready to head home. You aren’t staying late because you have a test or an anatomy practical coming up the next week. Leaving campus late on a weeknight is just a normal day in medical school. It’s what you do to stay away from falling too far behind. It’s what you do so you have some vague idea of what lecture is …
Confession One: I am an OR moron. Take me out of the OR, and I’m like any other third-year medical student. High achieving with at least some capacity for normal adult functioning. I study, I cook, I pay my bills. I attend medical school, for goodness sake. Most people in this world would consider that the pinnacle of young adult functioning. But in the OR, none of this matters. In the OR, I’m like half …
I feel like many of us talk about our lives before medical school as if we were recalling memories from a past incarnation. It’s almost as if it wasn’t us who traveled the world and studied music and worked as an engineer. As for myself, I had a passion for environmental science and religious studies. I traveled through southern Africa and South America working in national parks, reporting on conservation policy and enjoying the diversity of the …
Little did I know this adage was, in fact, Aristotelian in origin and not dreamed up by my mother. Nevertheless, it is one I remember first hearing recently: somewhere along the line as I progressed from high school to college and now to medical school. As I felt more intense academic pressure, as I complained more about the volume or difficulty of what I had to study, or if I was just plain exhausted—these were …
Columnist Emeritus
Albany Medical College
I'm Jency, a graduate of Siena College in New York where I received a BA in biology and a minor in Franciscan Service and Advocacy. I am currently in the Class of 2016 at Albany Medical College as part of the Siena/AMC combined-degree program in Science, Humanities, and Medicine. What you'll read from me will be an amalgamation of my life experiences and my non-academic thoughts--a mingling of the lighthearted and the thought-provoking. Though a laundry list could never truly encapsulate my (or anyone’s) deepest life’s passions, in a nutshell they are (in no particular order): travel, photography, film, literature, writing, graphic and interior design, comedy, real hip hop, onion rings, and--above all, and in all seriousness--this irresistible pull I feel towards society’s underserved, marginalized populations. They are those whom I fear we, as blossoming medical professionals, will be ill-equipped to care for unless we take positive steps to broaden our horizons and circles of inclusion.
My Mother's Pearls
My mother is a very simple woman. Though she may be a well-respected physician at Columbia University, you might never know it if you saw her. She dresses simply, she speaks kindly, and she cares endlessly. Her wealth lies not in her tangible possessions--she doesn't even own a pearl necklace. Her pearls are of wisdom, and it is those pearls that I hope to share with you.
