Student Research at Duke

When I was a little kid, about 3 or 4 years old, I used to go to “work” every day. When I was at “work” I did several things- build houses from Legos, make structures out of clay, and oddly enough steal my dad’s old stethoscope and try to perform patient assessments on my dolls. I even went as far as medicating them with Tylenol I’d steal from the medicine cabinet which my mother later accused me of consuming myself, not understanding that it was for my dolls. Sheeesh.

As you can see, yes, I was an odd child, but more importantly, I’ve wanted to enter the medical field ever since I was 3 or 4. My dad is a physician that now heads a pathology lab. Back in the day, he’d bring me into work and show me cool stuff like tapeworms in jars that were extracted from people or microscopes. I was an easily amused child. When I finally hit middle school and high school, my science courses increased my interest in medicine, making me like it for reasons other than “I want to be like my dad.” Community service is something that I’ve always held as being extremely valuable, and since I’m good at science and love it, the medical field suits me.

I started working in a lab the summer after 10th grade. I’ve spent time now both in a clinical lab and a wet lab. I’ve found that I enjoy both, but professionally, I can see myself having a clinical lab.

Before applying to this program, I was more persuaded to go on a straight MD track. Now, I’m not so sure. I like research…but I also like interacting with patients. I’m contemplating the MD/PhD track more seriously now (I’ve tossed the idea around before), and if I don’t end up with a PhD, I still plan on doing research with clinical data. My father pointed out that this is definitely feasible too.

We’ll see what happens. Until then, I’m staying in Fan Wang’s Cell Biology lab next semester as it has been a rewarding experience this summer, and I’m going to continue doing Duke EMS (and possibly shadowing more people..).

This entry was posted on Friday, July 20th, 2007 at 9:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.