I’m still discovering the most amazing things about my classmates after two years of being together. We all draw upon each other’s background and experience at different times.
I spent my time in my clinical skills group at Western Psychiatric Institute with one woman who worked as an animator in California before coming to medical school, and another woman who had her Ph.D. and spent time in the Peace Corps. We got to talking about malnutrition and dehydration as it effects the homeless and the woman from the Peace Corps could relate these very subtle clues because she had seen it with her own eyes.
During biochemistry, we had a classmate who had done research at MIT who became a lifeline because he knew everything about every single receptor and every enzyme. He could explain things on our level and give us some study tools. Students are really a bridge here which is really helpful. I’ve traveled a lot and lived in a lot of different places—London, Georgia, Minnesota, Puerto Rico—so even while I look like a traditional student in the sense that I came straight from college, I think we all add something to the mix.
