Episode 29, Part 2: Pulling Back the Curtain! Medical School Questions Answered.

[00:00:00] Intro: We are a resource for learners, including every member of the Live Strong Cancer Institute’s, on track educational pipeline from middle school to residency. We are a growing collection of interviews, talks and experiences that uncover the myths and the uncertainties of cancer and careers and cancer in order to empower and inspire generations of thinkers and leaders. This is Cancer Uncovered an education and empowerment podcast by the Live Strong Cancer Institutes. Welcome

[00:00:44] Kristen: back to Cancer Uncovered. This is Kristen Wyn, program manager at the Livero Cancer Institutes, which is part of Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin. Hook Em horns. We’re back with part two of pulling back the curtain Medical School questions answered. If you haven’t listened to part one of the episode, please go back and do that first.

[00:01:05] Kristen: And then meet us back here for more with Rachel and Brooke, current Dell Medical School students who are sharing their experiences and their words of wisdom when it comes to all things medical school we’re talking about what’s great, what’s hard, what the admission process is like, what happens after medical school, the whole shebang, and as we mentioned in part one, but it is not to be forgotten.

[00:01:29] Kristen: What you are hearing are the experiences of two unique people who were kind enough to honestly share their journeys. Everyone’s journey looks different. There are many ways to get involved in medicine and cancer and medical school is just one way to get there. Alright, let’s jump right back in with Rachel and Brooke.

[00:01:52] Kristen: When and why did you decide to go to medical school?

[00:01:56] Rachel: I was one of those where I was. Eight years old, very, very

[00:02:00] Brooke: young. I had a

[00:02:02] Rachel: family friend who, uh, was got diagnosed with cancer and he ended up passing away and it was the first person that had died in my circle in my life. And I decided to switch from being a veterinarian to wanting to be a doctor.

[00:02:16] Rachel: And a lot of people have this idea when they’re young that that’s what they wanna do, but truly I kept looking at it with a microscope and making sure this is what I wanted to do. And I really did. I was very lucky that that was something that I ended up wanting to do because every step along the way it, it made me realize that yes, I want to work with patients, I want to make their lives better, and I want to be challenged every day.

[00:02:39] Rachel: Um, and if that’s something that resonates with you, then maybe this is the right field too.

[00:02:44] Kristen: What is one thing about medical school that was a complete surprise to you?

[00:02:48] Brooke: One thing

[00:02:48] Rachel: about medical school that was a surprise was the kind of rigor of it. Honestly, it was, it was a very big step from undergrad until medical school for me, than getting to med school school’s hard.

[00:03:02] Rachel: But I, I was also surprised with how much I loved it, and so loving the subject made it so much easier to study for it and really get behind it, and so

[00:03:10] Brooke: that was probably surprising. Okay. Okay.

[00:03:13] Kristen: What does a

[00:03:14] Brooke: current week

[00:03:16] Kristen: look like at

[00:03:16] Brooke: school for you? So currently

[00:03:19] Rachel: I am in my fourth year, which means every week looks different, but it could be, you know, like tomorrow when I’m having my online interview on Zoom, I could be sitting there and interviewing in my interview clothes.

[00:03:32] Rachel: Um, or I could be on rotation, taking an elective. So next month I start on psychiatry, which is not what I’m going into, but just something I get to fulfill for my degree. Um, or I could be in the I C U, you know, helping out, um, as a fourth year. And you get, you get kind of a. Um, a bigger role on your team when the older you are in medical school.

[00:03:52] Rachel: What

[00:03:53] Kristen: advice about school and career would you tell your 15 year

[00:03:56] Rachel: old self? My biggest advice for when I was 15 or honestly until I got even to med school is doing what? You love will impact your career more than doing what you think you need to do. Mm-hmm. For example, one of the most impactful things, and the reason why I even got a scholarship in medical school was me volunteering at.

[00:04:21] Rachel: An underserved community in a ministry that I thought had nothing to do with medical school. It wasn’t medical related whatsoever. It was just something I wanted to do and I felt led to do. And that was something that they cited as like one of the most primary aspects that. Made them admit me to medical school.

[00:04:39] Rachel: And so I, I just want to say, if you think you need to check every single box and just, you know, be, be this robot that goes through as a pre-med and does all these things you don’t kind of don’t wanna do, maybe that’ll get you far. But I can tell you that, especially from someone who’s even been on the admission side a bit, when someone is truly

[00:04:58] Brooke: passionate about something, it could be,

[00:05:00] Rachel: you know, knitting.

[00:05:01] Rachel: It could be y your favorite band, it could be music, it could be like, Anything. If it, it just shines through so much more, then you know, something that we know that you kind of checked a box for. So just do what you love and it’ll fall into place.

[00:05:14] Brooke: Yeah, I

[00:05:15] Rachel: love

[00:05:15] Kristen: that. What is the admissions process

[00:05:17] Brooke: like for medical school?

[00:05:19] Rachel: The admissions process starts pretty early, so most students, if they’re in their undergrad, which means they’re college, you know, four year college, they’re, you know, studying, working through bio and chemistry and all of that, typically around their. Junior year is when you start studying for and take the MCM A.

[00:05:38] Rachel: It’s a m the medical college admissions test. It’s the test, it’s seven hours. It’s, you know, pretty grueling. It’s something that everyone hears about and talks about and stresses about, and you just have to do it to get into med school. You get a score. Um, that’s kinda the first step I would say. Once you have an MCAT score and you can also take it your senior year, you can take it all the way up until you apply.

[00:05:58] Rachel: Of note. This is something that’s very important for our listeners to understand. When you apply to medical school, the application opens in May. Like May, June time, but you don’t matriculate, which means like you don’t attend medical school until the very next year. So if I was gonna apply this year in this May for medical school, May, 2023, I would not be a medical student until August of 2024.

[00:06:24] Rachel: Mm-hmm. So it’s to apply really early, a lot of kids, they will start thinking about applying and. It’s almost, you know, may of that year. And, you know, they think that they’re gonna just matriculate that fall and that’s not the case. And so, um, just making sure. So basically you apply and you get, you know, letters of recommendation from your science faculty.

[00:06:45] Rachel: So that’s typically someone that, you know, you took, I got my letters of rec from my neuroscience professors. Um, and typically two to three letters of recommendation. And then maybe someone that you volunteered with also will apply. And so there’s like a general application where you apply to lots of schools.

[00:07:01] Rachel: And then they will, each school will look at your application and maybe send you a secondary application. So you send everything out in June, and then over the summer schools will start sending you secondaries, which means essays. And you’ll do lots and lots and lots of essays from your biggest essays.

[00:07:16] Rachel: Your personal statement that, um, basically you just tell people why you wanna go to medical school and what’s your story Like, a lot of people talk about, you know, the reason why they, they first were interested in medicine. Experiences along the way, things like that. And then subsequently you do lots and lots of essays for these schools.

[00:07:33] Rachel: And then you send in your secondary applications. And then if you are selected by those schools, then you do an interview. And typically those were in person lately because of covid, they’ve been on Zoom. And so it’s an all day thing. You dress up and get to just do different interviews with faculty, um, whether that’s talking about your resume or doing group interviews or things like that.

[00:07:54] Rachel: And so that’s all throughout the fall, so you’ll have interviews up until maybe January of that. Whole year, so like May to January. And then similar to what I’ve been talking about with residency, uh, there is a match process. So once you’ve interviewed all these

[00:08:11] Brooke: schools, you

[00:08:12] Rachel: get to rank them. And actually that might be just a Texas thing, Brooke.

[00:08:17] Rachel: You might have to come in on me, but. In Texas, there’s a match where, um, basically you rank the schools from one to, you know, however many schools you ended up interviewing at, whether that’s five or 10 or whatever. And then, um, you’ll essentially get assigned one school based on how the school

[00:08:35] Brooke: ranked you as well.

[00:08:37] Brooke: So that’s kind of

[00:08:38] Rachel: the whole process. It can be pretty grueling and you have to take a lot of time to pre prepare beforehand. And then I, I also know a lot of people that apply multiple years, if they don’t get into a school or they don’t get into a school that they love, people try again. And that doesn’t look bad on you.

[00:08:55] Rachel: It just typically shows resilience and shows that this is something that you are dedicated to and. Yeah, you can take gap years, research years, any sort of thing to kind of fill up that time if you don’t get that round. Cuz a lot of people do that anyway. Yeah. Um, that’s what I did. Yeah. I love it.

[00:09:13] Kristen: Thank you so much for making the time to do this and running in when it wasn’t on your calendar and it were a surprise.

[00:09:20] Kristen: I think you handled it really, really well. Um, so thank you for being cool and calm and

[00:09:25] Rachel: collected four years of practice. That’s actually what is, is just. Just being calm, cool, and collected in situations where you have

[00:09:33] Brooke: no idea what you’re doing. And it’s great.

[00:09:36] Rachel: I love it. I

[00:09:37] Kristen: love it. Words of wisdom via Rachel.

[00:09:39] Kristen: That’s so good. Okay, well, we’ll let you go. I’m gonna continue with Brooke. Brooke, I’m gonna hold you here a little bit longer, get your feedback on some of these questions. Um, but Rachel, have a great rest of your day and your week, and we will talk to

[00:09:51] Rachel: you very soon. All right. Thanks so much. Bye y’all. Bye so much.

[00:09:58] Brooke: I’ll start with, I, I think medical school is, uh, kind of like Rachel said, is challenging in a different way than other things that I have done in, in my life. Um, I kind of used to joke that like, I’m pretty sure the hardest that I ever worked was in high school, um, because like you have to be, I had to be at school at seven 30 and like sports practice ended at six 30.

[00:10:19] Brooke: That’s long. Yeah. Then you like come home and eat dinner and do three hours of homework. And it’s just like that, that thinking about how I, I did that and then I’d spend my Saturdays like. At sports tournaments or volunteering or whatever. Yeah. Um, so like, you know, that was, that, that was challenging just because of like the sheer amount of time.

[00:10:39] Brooke: I think, um, undergrad is challenging because you’re, um, you know, maybe held to hire academic standard and you might be on your own in a new place for the first time. And like making friends and kind of figuring out, you know, who you are and what’s important to you, and that’s all challenging. Um, and then medical school in a similar.

[00:10:56] Brooke: You know, vain is challenging for a whole host of reasons. Like academically, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s rigorous, but you do tend to have a little bit more choice about how you spend your time. This varies throughout medical school, but, mm-hmm. Um, you know, instead of having to be, for example, at high school from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM I maybe would have lectures from eight to noon, and then, you know, it’s.

[00:11:21] Brooke: I have a lot of work to do in studying to do in the afternoon, but if I want to go work out or make a big lunch and then study later in the afternoon, that is totally fine. So I would say it’s challenging, but definitely doable. Just like everything in life I, I, you know? Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:38] Kristen: Yeah. So I’ll ask you the same question then.

[00:11:41] Kristen: What. What about medical school totally

[00:11:44] Brooke: surprised you? This is a difficult question. Probably what surprised me the most was how. Like stuck in our ways medical school is, and healthcare is as a whole, which maybe speaks to like some naivete of my own, but especially Dell, which is, you know, has a really cool curriculum and is very innovative and flexible a lot of the times.

[00:12:10] Brooke: There are a lot of things in medical school across the board, um, at different schools and stuff that we do just because they’ve. Always been done or they’ve always been done that way, that doesn’t really seem like a very good reason to do things sometimes. Um, so that I think has been one of the surprising things to me is like just how, like when you stop to think about like, oh, why do we take this board exam that’s eight hours long, for example, that hasn’t been shown to have a lot of correlation to clinical success later.

[00:12:41] Brooke: And it’s like, well, we always had, right. Yeah. No, that’s

[00:12:45] Kristen: good. That’s good. Thank you. How much does medical school

[00:12:49] Rachel: cost and are there

[00:12:52] Brooke: scholarships for medical school? Yeah, so medical school is extremely expensive. Sort of like what Rachel was talking about earlier with like residents, I. You know, pay being not super fair compared to the amount of work that they’re doing.

[00:13:06] Brooke: A lot of times people also bring up the fact that like residents usually have a lot, a lot of debt because medical school is so expensive to, to go back a little bit, medical school cost varies a lot. So everything from like the mcat, which costs several hundred dollars all the way to applications, which also costs a lot of money, and there’s a different application for.

[00:13:28] Brooke: All United States medical schools and then Texas Medical, public Medical schools has their own. So for Texas people that are applying to the Texas schools, you pay one flat fee for the whole application. For all the Texas medical schools, the first one. Okay, but at other, for other, Medical schools that are not in Texas or private medical schools, you have to pay per application, so that money adds up really quickly as well.

[00:13:55] Brooke: And then paying for ACT or the cost of actual medical school varies tremendously depending on public or private. And what state you’re in. So we’re in Texas and we have, you know, a really, really, uh, well-funded public Texas, uh, medical school. So the cost for Dell is about $20,000 per year in tuition. And that is on the extreme lower end Yeah.

[00:14:21] Brooke: Of of medical schools. So I went to USC for undergrad, for example, and their yearly tuition is closer to 60,000. And then of course you have to add on the cost of living because I know some people who have worked intermittently throughout medical school, but it would be. Extremely difficult to like hold down a job that would actually pay for living expenses during medical school just because there’s so many commitments on your time and it is so rigorous.

[00:14:46] Brooke: Um, so most people take out a lot of loans to pay, if not for the tuition, than just to be able to live a balanced, safe, healthy life for the years that they’re in medical school. So I know those numbers are seems almost so astronomical. It’s like how can you even begin to fathom them? There are.

[00:15:06] Brooke: Scholarships for every part of the journey. So there’re there’s financial aid for the mcat and then also financial aid for application fees. Um, so those are, I don’t have all the details on those resources. They also vary by state and by school. Um, but they’re out there. And then for medical schools, Most medical schools will consider you for, if they have scholarships, will consider you automatically for scholarships.

[00:15:30] Brooke: Some of them you have to apply like on a need basis, um, and write a couple of extra essays. Um, and then there are also a lot of smaller, like not full tuition, private scholarships available companies. Schools have. Individual scholarships that can be anywhere from like $500 to $2,000 mm-hmm. That you apply for kind of as, as much as you can are.

[00:15:57] Brooke: At Dell, we have a really wonderful financial aid office, um, that’s run by a man named Ernesto. And he is really, really great about emailing all of us whenever there’s a scholarship that some of us might qualify for, um, available. The vast majority of people graduate medical school with some amount of debt, either from undergraduate or paying for medical school tuition or paying for just life during medical school.

[00:16:22] Brooke: Yeah. Um, that is very, very, very normal. I believe the average amount of debt is somewhere between 200,000 and $500,000. Wow. Yeah. Uh, again, big, big numbers. Medical school is a gigantic financial commitment. And also we all know a lot of doctors who. Live, you know, comfortably. And so that is possible.

[00:16:43] Brooke: There’s lots of, um, once you get into residency and start making payments on your loans, there’s a lot of programs geared towards loan forgiveness. So for example, If you work at certain qualifying federally qualified health centers or certain federally qualified hospitals, um, and you make payments on your loans for 10 years, at the end of those 10 years, your federal student loans will be forgiven.

[00:17:07] Brooke: But that means that like after residency, you might go work somewhere that you otherwise. Wouldn’t, or maybe you would, you know, in order to get that, that benefit of that loan forgiveness. Um, so I definitely don’t wanna underestimate how much of a commitment it is. Yeah. And at the same time, There is a lot of talk and a lot of movement made to make medical school less financially prohibitive because our physicians are at their best when they come from backgrounds that represent the backgrounds of our patients.

[00:17:34] Brooke: While it is a commitment, and if you are, oh, I just wanna make a lot of money and that’s why I’m gonna be a doctor, not a very good reason. You should go into computer science and you can still work in healthcare. Yeah, that’s right. You make a lot of money a lot faster and have a lot less debt, but if this is something that you really feel called to.

[00:17:53] Brooke: People make it work and it, you know, I haven’t finished yet. Right. And I’m not gonna speak to every single person’s financial situation, but, um, it, it can be worth it. It’s doable and it can be worth it. But I think it’s really important to, to be aware kind of, of like what you’re committing yourself to.

[00:18:09] Brooke: Yeah. No, that’s good.

[00:18:11] Kristen: I’m gonna ask you some of the same questions I asked Rachel before she left. So when and why did you decide to go to medical school?

[00:18:18] Brooke: So when I was in the third grade, my, one of my classmates’ moms came to talk to us and she was a medical research scientist and she taught us about T-cells and the bubble Boy, I don’t know if that’s like an appropriate nickname still, but that’s what she, her presentation was called Uhhuh and it was got this.

[00:18:35] Brooke: This young man who was born without T-cells basically. Uh, and he lived most of his life in this like plastic bubble. I don’t know what it was made of, but a bubble. She talked about how her research was involved in how, you know, studying this young man and his genetic condition in order to like learn about how the immune system works, and then eventually using that.

[00:18:58] Brooke: You know, information and stuff that they learned to help treat people with H I V and people with different types of cancers. And I was just sold. I was like, I’m gonna be a medical research scientist and I’m gonna study T-cells because this is the coolest thing ever. And I remember going to my pediatrician’s office and they were like, oh my gosh, what do you wanna be when you grow up?

[00:19:16] Brooke: And I was like, medical research scientist. And they were like, what? Okay. But then when I was about, you know, fast forward a couple years, I realized how like research heavy that field was and how you don’t actually like get a lot of patient care time. And as you might be able to talk from this podcast, I’m quite chatty, but I love people.

[00:19:35] Brooke: I just think. Living and learning with them is the best thing, like the best way to spend time. And so I really was like, I feel a little bit more drawn to things where I’m a little bit more people focused. And that’s kind of how I landed at medicine, was like, I wanna do clinical medicine, not spend some time in lab, but still get to do the cool sciencey stuff and like learn about how the body works.

[00:19:57] Brooke: And then, you know, ever since then, I don’t know, it must have been like 13 or 14, just, you know, woke up one day and now, now I’m a third year. So,

[00:20:06] Rachel: Um, how did you arrive, I know you’re

[00:20:08] Kristen: in the, the cancer interest group, the oncology student interest group. How did you get there? Where, where, where did that come from?

[00:20:15] Brooke: Yeah, so I always just been interested in the biology of cancer and this idea that like our own bodies, sometimes I. Betray us in a way, but also that the things, the very things that make us live and our skin regrow and our hair grow and all these things can also be part of this like really scary process.

[00:20:35] Brooke: I think the more that I learned about cancer and stuff, I also like the, from the medical side of it, I think oncology is one of those fields that by necessity is. Really at the forefront of interprofessional care and interdisciplinary care and care for the whole person. And I think that’s like really lovely.

[00:20:56] Brooke: I don’t know why we, you know, for so long we’re like, well they’re the heart person and they’re the mind person and they’re the blah blah blah. So I really think that that’s such a special, uh, community get to get to work in. And it’s also really exciting. There’s a lot of, of big changes that are happening and, you know, cancer has become such a, for some, People like chronic illness that they will live with with a really long time.

[00:21:18] Brooke: And just being a part of that, like exciting science of it, but also really getting to know patients and, and be a part of this, you know, like uncharted waters, uh, with them has always kind of kept me just coming back. What does a current

[00:21:33] Kristen: week at school look like for you?

[00:21:35] Brooke: I will, I will take you through a first and a second year day because at Dell our third year, we have the opportunity to do, um, some other degree programs and stuff.

[00:21:45] Brooke: So I’m in like a totally different master’s degree program right now, so I don’t feel like my, my day is particularly well represented of. Oh, sure. No, and I

[00:21:54] Kristen: think that’s actually good. So. To sort of delineate and DMed isn’t like every other medical school necessarily, right? They’re a little bit unique, but yes.

[00:22:04] Kristen: If you could take us maybe through MS one s are focused on this and then when you get to second year, it’s this. That

[00:22:10] Brooke: would be really helpful. Yeah. Yes. Certainly. So m um, the preclinical year at Dell is MS. One year. Some schools it’s MS one and part of MS two some years, some schools it’s MS one and MS two.

[00:22:22] Brooke: Um, and that just means that it is your classroom learning time. So that’s when you’re like, Reading a lot, going into a lot of lectures, getting everything in, um, in preparation for your clinical year. So first year, for example, my week would look like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I would have case-based learning from eight to 10.

[00:22:42] Brooke: So group learning or we’d go over a case and learn from that. And then lectures from 10 to 12. The big group lecturers, having different faculty come in and, um, lecture on a specific topic. And then I’d have the afternoon free to study by myself for the most part. I then on one day a week, I would have lab.

[00:23:04] Brooke: So cadaver lab, when you go in and, and part of the dissection and the learning about the human body and that really special time, um, usually from about one to 5:00 PM say on like Wednesday. Additionally, there would be like one day for me, it was Thursday afternoons that were, um, clinical learning times.

[00:23:22] Brooke: So of course, of course we called docs, um, where we would go and learn about the like physical exam maneuvers and all of the different, you know, how to listen to the heart and how to listen to the lungs and how to do a knee exam and all those kind of things. Um, so that was most of first year. You know, throw in some research meetings or interest group meetings and stuff.

[00:23:44] Brooke: Um, but it’s primarily. You have a lot of free time. Um, we have a lot of free time to, to study, you know, topics that are a little bit more difficult for you or, or whatnot. Um, and then the weekends, like I would usually take all of, at least all of Saturday off and Sunday morning, and then I would try to study Sunday afternoons.

[00:24:01] Brooke: But I think I was, I was pretty rigid about being like Saturdays or for. You know me. So, uh, when moving into clinical year, that is the, after you finish your preclinical stuff, you go into the hospital and that’s when you do rotations, like eight weeks on psychiatry, eight weeks on internal medicine, eight weeks on, uh, pediatrics, and you rotate through, um, eight weeks at a time.

[00:24:24] Brooke: So for those, the schedule varies a little bit depending on what rotation that I was on. But the most rigorous it would be, it was probably the surgery clerkship, uh, would be like 6:00 AM to 6:00 PM five or six days a week. So those were, those were, those were long days, but you learn a lot, um, and you can study while you’re there and stuff.

[00:24:45] Brooke: Whereas like some of the lighter rotations, it might be eight to four, Monday through Friday. So that’s kind of what, and then the, that, that was a similar situation was like, if I had a day off, I was not going to study on the day off. Um, I was very rigid about that. And then,

[00:25:02] Kristen: so you’re in year three, which you were saying looks totally different, like you’re getting an additional degree.

[00:25:08] Kristen: Can you talk about that just a

[00:25:09] Brooke: little bit? So, yeah, doll’s really unique in that we have a little bit of an accelerated first and second year so that our third year is free to pursue other interests. So for example, you could do, get on a research project and do a, you know, a more intense research year.

[00:25:26] Brooke: And I have some friends who were working with Austin Area nonprofits, um, and learning a little bit about. The more administrative side of healthcare. Um, and then also you can get a dual degree program. So, um, you can get your m mba, you can get your Master’s of public health. I am actually in the Master’s of Arts and Design program, which is basically geared towards taking people from.

[00:25:50] Brooke: All across the map, like I have photographers, architects, all these kinds of people in my classes and teaching them how to use design thinking, human-centered design to approach really big systemic problems like healthcare and how to kind of meld in creative problem solving and empathy driven work into solving problems like the insurance situation in the United States, or the cost of medication in the us.

[00:26:17] Brooke: And so it’s been really, really interesting and totally different skillset that I’m really excited to be, have the opportunity to, to build. Um, is that

[00:26:25] Kristen: common, like do other medical schools offer that, like kind of dual degree or, or this is pretty innovative, right?

[00:26:34] Brooke: Yes. I know of, um, some me schools that offer the mph, so the MD mph right, right, right.

[00:26:41] Brooke: Degree program. I don’t know of any that. Build out your whole third year for you to pursue that. They’re kind, A lot of schools are moving towards kind of the Dell model of shortening the preclinical stuff from two years to just one. Right? One and a half, but in general. Most medical schools will have like a, you know, they have things like summer break and they start in August, whereas Dell starts in June.

[00:27:07] Brooke: Um, and there is, you know, maybe a week in between years. Really, really not a lot. Okay. Um, so it is pretty unique in that, in that standard. Okay. Okay.

[00:27:16] Kristen: What does year four look like? I know we just lost our, our fourth year, but she, you know, she, she gave us a little bit of information. What are you looking forward to

[00:27:25] Brooke: in year four?

[00:27:26] Brooke: Well, so I just, um, am working on my, on getting my fourth year schedule set up right now. Nice. So nice. I’m now intimately familiar with what fourth year, fourth year will look like. Nice. Um, so I like to think of it as like first year you’re in the classroom. Second year you’re in the hospital. Third year you’re doing your heart’s desire, and then fourth year you go back to the hospital.

[00:27:45] Brooke: So the, it looks pretty similar to, um, second year in terms of you’re spending a lot of time in the hospital on rotations, but. You get to pick your rotations Nice. Um, and pick what, you know, what areas that you really wanna spend time on. Yeah. Um, in the, in hopes that you, you know, can get recommendation letters from faculty in that field, um, as you prepare for, for residency applications.

[00:28:08] Brooke: So, and then it’s also like finishing up. You know, degree requirements and such. Um, but it’s really, really customizable. So you could, like I’m doing an elective in the musculoskeletal integrative practice unit, even though I don’t really wanna work in sports medicine. Yeah. But cause they have this really innovative, interdisciplinary team that I’m really excited to get to see how that works.

[00:28:30] Brooke: Yeah. And, and be a good team player there. It’s. Sort of like a second, uh, clinical second year

[00:28:36] Kristen: light. What else? What else did you pick out for your

[00:28:40] Brooke: rotations? So I have to do a critical care elective or that’s required or graduation requirement. Yeah. Um, so I’ll be doing a surgical i c u rotation just to learn how to manage pre and post-operative patients that are critically ill.

[00:28:54] Brooke: So that’s a, a really cool rotation to get to learn about ventilators and chest tubes and things like that. Mm-hmm. The rotation I’m probably most excited for is an advanced palliative care rotation. Yeah. I love, like palliative care is where, um, I hope to spend a lot of my career. And that with that four, it’s a four week elective and we actually get to spend an entire week at a hospice house in Austin, which I’m really, really looking forward to.

[00:29:18] Brooke: I think that’s like gonna be a really special experience. What advice

[00:29:23] Kristen: about school and career would you tell your 15 year

[00:29:26] Brooke: old self man advice? For my 15 year old self, I think I would. Just really like her to calm down. I, I’m pretty sure the hardest I ever worked was like 15, 16 and yeah. So that girl just really needed a hug.

[00:29:41] Brooke: She aww. She needed a hug and she needed to relax. Aww, that’s good. Know that it, it is gonna work out a message that I would like to share. Yeah. Is that, Medicine can be for everybody. And if it’s something that you are really passionate about, um, and think this is where, you know, you wanna spend a lot of your time and then feel called to it, then like, I think absolutely do it.

[00:30:05] Brooke: There’s a lot of barriers that are put up in the system such as the, the cost and you know, how competitive it is and all these things. And there’s also a lot of barriers we put up for ourself about like, oh, am I smart enough? Well, I’m not good at. Math or I, you know, got a C one time or I, I want a family and I, I won’t be able to be a good parent if I, if I do this.

[00:30:27] Brooke: And all those fears are legitimate and they, you know, they come from a lot of different places, but also like they are surmountable and those are good questions to ask, but they’re not, it’s not the end all be all like you, you can do this. If you want to do this, you absolutely can find people who are gonna work with you and keep chugging along.

[00:30:45] Brooke: And it, it is, it is achievable for sure.

[00:30:47] Kristen: I think you’ve done it. Congratulations. That was awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Brooke. You’ve done it.

[00:30:54] Brooke: No, no,

[00:30:55] Kristen: no. This has been great. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you for breaking it down.

[00:31:00] Brooke: Thank you so much. I’m excited. I’m good. Like I’ve, I’m just now getting to be like, wait, I have something to offer.

[00:31:07] Kristen: Yes. Brooke Upchurch, you have so much to offer. We thank you to Brooke and Rachel Goran for their time, their expertise, and their willingness to share with us. We also have an exciting update from Rachel that we will let her explain in an update episode coming up very soon. Spoiler alert, it’s about her residency program.

[00:31:32] Kristen: If you wanna hear more about going to medical school, we put together some really fantastic episodes. Way back at the beginning of our time with you all. Episode two, it’s in two parts, is on race and medical education in which we talk to students of color that were at the time attending Dell Medical School.

[00:31:54] Kristen: That’s an incredible episode, so make sure to take a listen to that one as well. If you have more questions about going to medical school or some other questions about cancer that we can uncover, please email us at Live Strong Cancer Institutes. DMed. Dot uex.edu. Please make sure institutes is plural.

[00:32:15] Kristen: You can also check us out online@delmmed.uex.edu. You can follow our chair, Dr. Gale Eckhart on Twitter. Her handle is s Gale Eckhart. Eckhart is spelled e c k h a r d t. This is Kristen Wang with Cancer Uncovered. Thank you for listening and learning with us. See you next time.