I was finishing sophomore year when it occurred to me: this was the summer that I needed to figure out what I needed to do with my life. “What career do I want? What school should I go to? Where will I live?”.
To find a passion and build an interest in a particular subject, I needed to explore my options, meet with people in the profession, and see what appealed to me. So many thoughts raced through my head, “Where will the future take me? Will I ever find a job or career that is the perfect fit for me?”
In early May, I was frantically looking for summer programs in neuroscience that would accept high school students with little-to-no experience in medicine. I searched through every program available: Research at UPenn, studying medicine abroad in England, an online program at the University of Oregon.
Summer was quickly approaching and I wasn’t finding a match. After searching for days, I found it. Stanford, the dream school, offered a three-week lecture series with faculty and guest speakers. I thought to myself, “Yes! Finally, I found it!”. From July 10 to July 28 I explored my love of neuroscience at the Stanford Lecture Explore series.
Day one: I woke up and checked my email first thing. Inside the lengthy message, there were guidelines for the three weeks that would change my life. During lectures we could ask questions in the chat and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we were able to participate in discussion with other students and TAs. The lectures were given by Stanford staff (doctors or professors) and alumni who are currently doing research. Each week we get to hear from Stanford doctors and professors on a new topic: neuroscience, regenerative medicine, cancer biology, and bioengineering. I logged into the class as soon as I finished reading the email.
Teacher assistants greeted me and introduced the lecturers for the first week. At first, I felt overwhelmed with the important, prominent people giving the lectures. To me, they felt like the superhumans that were going to save the human race in one way or another.
The more lectures that went one, the more relatable each lecture became. One of the topics I found fascinating was Dr. Rob Cowan’s work on headaches. Trying to cure a headache is treating the whole physical body and emotional pain. There is no one piece of medicine that could cure the patient of their migraine, it is a collective treatment that is thoroughly considered with the patient’s previous medical history.
Medicine is much more than physical health, it is also taking care of emotional well-being and making sure the patient is getting the best treatment to restore their best selves. I get headaches often and whenever I do, I find myself always resorting to Aspirin or Tylenol and just continuing to push through whatever I was doing.
This one lecture on taking care of oneself in both physical and mental aspects, helped me see that there was more to medicine than the actual medication. Health is collective well-being and every human must focus on their emotional health, just as much as their physical health.
For our first discussion time,we had two teacher assistants that guided our conversations and provided a fun Quizizz game to summarize the week. This was the first time students were allowed to interact with each other and discuss topics they found intriguing in the class.
We also were able to learn more about each other as students and talk about what areas of medicine we are thinking of going into. Some students were just interested in programming, others had career goals to become doctors, some were just exploring medicine.
This “EXPLORE” series helped me explore more than just medical fields. I was originally interested in only neuroscience, but having exposure to all of the different types of fields and professions, made me open to other specialties such as, degenerative medicine.
The three weeks went by very fast and the course was over before I even realized it. At the end of the lecture series, the teacher assistants provided all of the students with their email and were always open to questions if they arise in the future.
The Stanford “EXPLORE” series required time commitment and open-mindedness, but it gave me the opportunity to explore the field, with the top experts worldwide. If you are a student wanting to learn more about medicine and gain exposure to many different specialties, this is the course for you.
