“During my medical school clerkships, an attending recognized a truth within me that I’d hidden for many years. Just a few hours into my pediatrics rotation, the attending asked me, ‘You had a rough childhood, didn’t you?’ I was aston…
Category: Medical school
To the lady in the floral dress
I sat hunched over in a coffee shop, staring at anatomy flashcards as they appeared and quickly disappeared on my computer screen. I was in the midst of my first semester of medical school, and I was feeling discouraged and overwhelmed. My classmates a…
We’re doctors. We signed the book.
As another medical school class graduates in the continued aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, I look back on my own ceremony. I remember the half-empty auditorium, the rows of parents snapping photos on their phones, and the many bored participants co…
Aduhelm and how money and politics supersede science
Alzheimer’s disease is not the only cause of dementia, but it is the most common. The many other types of dementia, e.g., Lewy body, vascular or frontotemporal, mostly affect older adults. Collectively, dementias are terrible diseases striking at the …
5 ways to maintain family bonds in medical school
Medical school can strip you of everything you have. As you’re doing everything you can to help others, there can be so many levels of dissatisfaction with your career choice and distress around going through medical training. But what I found was that…
8 scholarship tips for medical school
First off, congratulations to the Class of 2025 for getting into medical school. With the pandemic restrictions lifting, enjoy the next few months doing the things you love because medical school will take an emotional and financial toll on you. Accord…
Redefining what a hospital library should be
Have you ever been to one of those areas in the hospital called “the library” or “the educational/academic center”? No, I’m not talking about the athenaeum at the universities. The library we are talking about is the one at the …
Mentors, thank you for parenting me
Parenting is one of those things most of us end up doing but never get any full training on. It’s awkward. Some people are good at it; some people are terrible at it. Sometimes we never know if the parent is simply terrible at parenting, if they have a…
5 ways to have an outstanding mentorship relationship
Mentorship. We all do it; we all benefit from it. But we rarely talk about how the mentor-mentee relationship looks. We rarely talk about ways to improve a mentorship relationship or even have decent mentor-mentee relationships. In fact, many of us lik…
Surviving medical school with depression
I was first diagnosed with major depressive disorder as a preteen after my teenage sister died. I attempted suicide three years later. This would be the first of several attempts and the first of countless times I felt my life was not worth living. But…
