#mdphd

Class of 2023,  

I am making this post for myself and other members of the class of 2023. Anyone who has any advice or resources they want to share with us, pls do.

Please repost and add your resource/advice and reblog to save a Medical Student Life. 

I have started it below with this post I found on SDN (I don't normally use SDN and you shouldn't either)

What a year it’s been. In 2018, I applied to medical school, completed my prerequisites, shadowed physicians, volunteered in hospice and hospital, worked in the lab, got another paper out, continued the daily fight with SLE, walked a show in Minneapolis, and have several offers from medical schools, including fully funded MDPhD programs with stipends!!!

It has been a tough year, with a lot of anxiety, unknowns, and self doubt. As corny as it is, you really do have to believe in yourself even when no one else does. ESPECIALLY when no one else does. If you don’t believe you can, then who will? I am so thankful for the people in my life who mentored me when I had nothing to offer in return. I am thankful for the people who accepted me into their labs when I had a limited science background. I am thankful for the friends who encouraged me constantly through this tough year of unknowns!

Ignore the naysayers and the haters. If you are passionate about something, get after it! Two and a half years ago, I hadn’t even taken a college level biology course! Now I am a full time scientist god-willing with a future in research. Comparison is the thief of joy. Follow your dreams and work to make them a reality. Shoot for the moon!

My main goals for this new year:

consistency, diligence, self-care, meditation, and inspiration.

seems like I’m gonna be a physician scientist!

So I’ve had a chance to teach an undergrad some basic lab techniques for a bit earlier this summer. She wasn’t really safety trained, so she can only watch and not touch. As it turns out, I apparently favor a Socratic teaching method???

To engage her in what I was doing, I started asking her questions about what I was doing and some questions regarding the basic bio/chem theory of the techniques I was using, mostly because it’s a good way for me to assess her background knowledge so that I can meet her where she is at, and also because I think that coming with your own idea regarding how things work (and then have it validated by science or by the expertise of another researcher) is critical in the scientific method and a really good way to learn science. It also occurred me that what I was doing was kind of pimping? I mean, sure, I wasn’t asking questions to show my own strong background in chemistry and biochemistry - she already knew that and I knew that she knew that. I wanted to test her knowledge, not to chastise and gloat, but to teach. It was just so easy for my questions to come out in a way that sounds like pimping especially when my attention was also elsewhere keeping track of my samples, and I had to work to not sound like I’m actively pimping.

Seriously though, I find some treatment of Asian Americans in clinical research absolutely appalling. We don’t have data on the incidence of melanoma in Asian Americans and like... melanomas basically depend on sun exposure. Melanoma/sun exposure is in turn dependent on the environment, so we can’t exactly depend on research studies out of Asia for our estimates because of the history of colorism and colonialism has made many Asian Americans averse to sun exposure. At the same time, we don’t know the amount of sun exposure dark skinned individuals need to sustain sufficient Vit D. And colorectal cancer? Breast cancer? At some point, people decided because people in Asia have very low rates of breast cancer, all Asian Americans therefore do not need breast cancer screening, disregarding the evidence of many environment risk factors that are more prominent than genetic risk factors. Plenty of older Asian American women, who eat a more Americanized diet and follow more Americanized medical guidelines for care, died as a result.