The backstory

In the past few months, I have heard a combination of the following questions: “Where are you going to graduate school?” “Wait---you’re not going to med school?” “So, have you started looking for a job after graduation?” “So – when are you going to start your master’s program?” What follows is my attempt to answer all of the above questions (a recap of the last four years of my life).

When I was very young, I had a dream to go to medical school. I wanted to go to Harvard and be a doctor.

Grand pause….and then I went to Illinois Wesleyan University with a major in horn performance. Oops. Music turned out to not be right for me, but the general biology class I took for fun was difficult, busy, and completely intriguing. Since then, I have changed my major to biology, taking classes in invertebrate zoology, developmental biology, animal physiology, genetics, and biochemistry. And I love it. I have still stayed in touch with music, and I’ve been able to play in the orchestra at IWU as well as a brass quintet and horn ensemble. It’s funny – I ended up at one of the best schools in Illinois for biology, in a program that, while not being billed as pre-med, has one of the highest med school acceptance rates in Illinios (about 95%; for comparison, the state average is around 50%). The classes are challenging and diverse, and IWU is not “med school part one.” Requirements range from a botany course to an anatomy course to an evolutionary science course. IWU doesn’t cater to the pre-med students, but it provides them with an extremely rigorous preparatory environment to really learn HOW to learn and in addition, how to understand your short-comings as a biologist and prepare you for the working closely with others of different specialities. At the end of the day, there is a slight amount of recognition that you will never need to remember the characteristics common to the nemerteans and the annelids, but you will need the ability to process relationships, understand nuances in complicated biological terminology, and truly comprehend all sides of a given problem or issue. They are well-preparing students to make the best decisions with one million dollars in grant money, or how to collaborate with a fellow surgeon on a high-risk surgery. However, even among so many talented students planning to go into the field of medicine, it just didn’t feel right to me. I don’t agree with the methods pushing students out of medicine if they don’t do well on the MCAT (or the fact that Kaplan offers a $1,600 course to prepare you for the test). I realize that there is some truth to the idea that you should have to learn how to prepare lots of material and show that you have adequately learned it, but I think that it is an extremely harsh way to cut those passionate people of the population who just can’t take tests well out of the pool of potential doctors. And on the flip side, I see those students who are brilliant and able to prove it on a multiple choice test at the drop of a hat but are without drive or that essential reason of why they want to be a doctor. I know both of these students, as well as the spectrum inbetween…I have classes with them every day. And I just don’t see myself in that spectrum. Maybe one day I’ll think about going to medical school – now isn’t it. The competition would drive my poor collaborative soul up the wall, and the world doesn’t need another disillusioned doctor.

In the throes of decision-making, I went home my sophomore year of college confused and searching after a year of music and biology that left me painfully stretched thin. I spent much of that summer in a biochemistry lab at the University of Minnesota, learning to navigate a wet-lab (eg, a lab with chemicals, biological materials; something where active experiments are being done and quantitative results are being measured). After the research I had done with protozoans (= pond scum that moves) it was nice to deal with slightly more predictable work that “Dr. Balser – I can’t find my protist again!” However, the other thing that came hand in hand with this summer was an hour and a half bus ride each way from my home in Maplewood. I got to spend a lot of quality time listening to audio books, but in addition, I spent a good amount of my commute thinking. What did I like? Why? What can I do with this? How can I put everything I like into one career? I came up with a zillion answers, and while I was still overwhelmed, my life seemed to make a little more sense.

After all my time in Camp Fire USA and public service, a professor at school suggested that I look into the Truman Scholarship, a $30,000 educational grant to be given with the caveat that the recipient spend three of their seven years out of graduate school doing some sort of public service. I had the application folded up in my purse, and looked at it daily, thinking about what I had to offer such an award as well as my short-comings, given I had never taken a public policy course, didn’t plan on being a lawyer…odds were not in my favor. But, on the other hand, as a biologist, my thoughts on public service were very quality-of-life oriented, and my knowledge of environmental sustainability issues could make me a viable choice, even if I never wanted to pursue law. One hero was Edward O. Wilson, a continual advocate of biodiversity and preservation of the human species through our own self-awareness and realization that altruism is the characteristic that will save our world. Another was Gregory Poland, an IWU alum and world-renowned expert from the Mayo Clinic on the bird flu, a scientist declaring that the human race needs to change their paradigm of food, health care and social justice in order to prevent disease and increase the quality of life worldwide.

After talking things out with the faculty advisor for the Truman, we chose to do a policy proposal on urban greening projects, stressing my science background, plans for some sort of higher education in the sciences, and my public service experiences as a member of Camp Fire. I zeroed in on what seemed to be the perfect marriage of the environmental sustainability I saw as an unquestionable part of being human, and the prevention of disease. This career would be environmental toxicology, and more specifically inhalation toxicology, the science of the bad things we breathe and what to do about them. As part of the application process, I had one of the scariest interviews in my life with three extremely intelligent professors grilling me about weaknesses in my application, public policy decisions I would support, and how I thought my chosen career could REALLY enact change. Being in the line of fire, so to speak, as well as thinking on my feet to explain biological principles in a coherent manner to those not familiar with scientific terminology was quite the experience. With the help of my faculty advisor, I made it to the finalist stage, interviewing at St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis with eleven other candidates, almost all students preparing for a career in law. The interview was intense, but along with spending a day in a room with eleven other public policy advocates (and trying to study for an organic chemistry test the next day) I realized a great deal about my personal strengths and what I have to bring to other individuals in the world at large. While environmental sustainability is still at the root of my concerns, and a way of life I strive to achieve, sitting in a lab measuring levels of pollution in air samples is not how I want to spend my day. I want to spend my life talking to people about what they can do to improve their quality of life: how to more effectively understand biology and how to take advantage of known biological solutions to better their own lives. I want to be a new class of teacher-advocate for the sciences, working towards broadening scientific literacy and making biology relevant and exciting. While I did not win the Truman Scholarship, there is no way that it would be considered a loss. I was able to meet a great mentor, as well as get a much better feel for how I want to use biology in the rest of my life.

That winter, I applied to eleven summer programs, hoping that my summer spent researching at the University of Minnesota would help me get into a paid program. I applied to a variety of programs, including NYU, Johns Hopkins, UC Irvine, and MIT: they all looked so cool, but miles out of reach. I got really lucky, and I was offered a position as a summer fellow to do research within the Bioengineering Department at MIT. I ended up in the middle of a busy and incredibly intense lab doing work elucidating the mechanisms surrounding a particular gene therapy construct. There are no words to describe how fantastic my summer was, living in Boston, spending all day immersed in science, and spending extra time with other members of my program seeing the sights of Beantown. After a summer filled with great memories and the thought of MIT for graduate school, it was time to return back to the reality of school and classes.

After taking the GRE in Minnesota and cramming in family time for a scant five days, I headed back to IWU for my last year of undergrad, a tough transition after Boston. Being a pseudo-graduate student for a summer really didn’t help matters much, although living off campus in a house with three really different but equally great girls definitely helped. I made the mistake (a consistent one, apparently) of taking too many classes. I never learn.

As I spent most of the summer focused on research, this fall was the time to search for graduate schools. For the most part, I had no clue where I wanted to be, what I wanted to do, or where would be the best place to do what I’m not sure I want to do yet. Basically, it was a crapshoot. And it’s also frustrating that there are going to be places that I think about down the road that I wish I would have applied and visited (my undergrad wistful school is defintely Carleton). I ended up applying to the following schools, finishing my applications on reading day (the day before finals; another strategy I do not recommend):

-Columbia: Department of Microbiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons

-Harvard: Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology (Harvard Integrated Life Sciences; HILS)

-MIT: Department of Microbiology

-Rockerfeller University: Department of Immunology, Virology, and Microbiology

-University of California at Berkeley: Department of Bioengineering

-University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC): Department of Microbiology and Immunology; School of Medicine

-University of Michigan: Department of Microbiology and Immunology; Program in Biomedical Science (PIBS)

-University of Minnesota: Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology (MICaB)

-University of Wisconsin at Madison: Department of Molecular and Environmental Toxicology

-Yale University: Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS); Immunology (microbiology concentration)

As of now, I have heard back from all of the above schools except Harvard, MIT, and Rockefeller. As the latter two are my top two choices, I am definitely sitting on pins and needles.

In the meantime, my life is full of school, working on my thesis, tutoring, working out, music, and cooking really good food to keep me healthy in these next months of craziness...