September 24, 2018
What are you currently doing, professionally and/or personally? I graduated from college last spring, and I am applying to medical school for the fall of 2019. However, I am currently spending two gap years abroad in the southern French port city of Marseille, where I’m taking full advantage of all the opportunities this city and country have to offer. I spend two days a week working as an English language assistant for a preschool and primary school, where I teach English lessons to little ones. When I’m not in the schools, I’m either in the hospital or laboratory and take part in a weekly shadowing internship with a French neonatologist. I’ve even started to sit in on births in the operating and delivery rooms! I also volunteer weekly at another local children’s hospital, where I play board games with patients. The rest of my time is spent working in a neuroscience lab at the local university, where I will start conducting spatial navigation experiments on rats. The best part of my time in France is that I can do all of things I love in the clinical and laboratory settings all while speaking French!
How did you get there? Where did you attend college? Are there some career moves or other key experiences or relationships that have inspired you? I received my undergraduate degree from Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University in New York City, where I majored in neuroscience and behavior and minored in French. I spent one semester abroad in France in a program that emphasized cultural integration into the community and placed me in a homestay. This experience solidified my decision to take a few years off before medical school and return to France to seek opportunities to interact with people different than myself. I am adamant that homestays are one of the best ways to learn about and live like the local population. Read More