About

My name is Emily H. Park and I am a second year medical student at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School in Newark, NJ. Prior to medical school, I received my BA in English Literature from Columbia University. Before attending Columbia, I graduated from the Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, a magnet school in Hackensack, NJ. I began thinking that I was going to be a chemistry major in college and ended up becoming an English Literature major instead. To this day, I am so grateful that I had such an amazing Literature Humanities professor (a required course) as she was the one who made me realize the importance of learning to write well and inspired me to change majors. Columbia, home of the Pulitzer Prize, was the perfect place to nurture this ability. Additionally, I completed my premedical requirements, was Co-President of Premedical AMSA, and worked as Biology Lab TA for 2 years.

Basically, I have been in school all my life and am completely and blissfully naive to office politics, doing taxes, and other matters of real adulthood. Medical school, as it turns out, is not only where you are trained to become a physician but also a place where you can prolong your adolescence, sort of like a Never Never Land for academic overachievers.

I have a number of reasons for starting this blog.

#1. I did not find a lot of blogs out there written by medical students. Before coming to medical school, I had no idea what to expect. I wish I had had the insight to begin this blog when I was a first year so I could have kept record of slicing a cadaver’s head in half (yes, I did) and all those miserable times I flunked an exam (yes, I did). On the other hand, I don’t think many people would be interested in reading 600 entries that begin with: “Today I studied.” In better news, I am about to take my board exam in May 2011, so look forward to some entries regarding board study. Additionally, as I am nearing the beginning of my 3rd year, I will soon be beginning my rotations. I AM SO GLAD THE ACADEMIC YEARS ARE ABOUT TO END! Sorry, I’ll stop screaming, but seriously, I am.

#2. The way I see it, becoming a medical doctor in today’s healthcare system is not just about having perfect grades, research publications, and a great board score. Personally, I am interested in the business side of medicine, especially in terms of how technology will change how we practice medicine. By the time my classmates and I graduate, I think technology will be making or have already made a huge impact in the healthcare arena (for example: electronic health records).

#3. For myself. These first 3 years (I had to repeat a second year pathology course – a story for another time) have been quite the whirlwind. I hit a point during my second year where I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be a doctor anymore. To this day, I’m not sure why I began to feel that way. I think I put too much pressure on myself and had begun to believe that the personal sacrifices I was making for medical school were outweighing the future benefits. The way I see it, the hard part of medical school is not necessarily the academics but rather the maintaining of personal sanity as we go through this mentally grueling process. If I had no emotions (beep boop boop beep) like a a robot, I’m pretty sure this would all be so much easier. But as I gratefully wake up every morning still a human, learning to maintain sanity has not only helped me to mature so much as a person. Buddha says: Though s/he should conquer a thousand men in the battlefield a thousand times, yet s/he, indeed, who would conquer her/himself is the greatest hero/ine.