Hometown/Sending School
Little Rock/North Little Rock High School
College and Area(s) of Study
Hendrix College: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology major, Asian Studies minor.
Current profession and company. Tell us what you do.
I am a M.D./Ph.D. student at UAMS. I’m currently in the fourth year of my PhD, and my lab studies S. aureus osteomyelitis (staph bone infections).
What made you choose ASMSA?
I chose ASMSA because of the opportunities it offered that I wouldn’t be able to get elsewhere. The availability of higher-level classes and concurrent credits I was able to get there gave me a head start on my degree, which is really appealing when you know you’re interested in a career that would require a lot of training after undergrad.
What are your fondest memories of the school?
First of all, I met my husband at ASMSA, so there’s that of course. I also remember during senior year, after the science fair, it really hit me for the first time that I was going to get paid to do science for the rest of my life. I don’t think the reality of the life I was working towards had actually sunk in before that, like I “knew” I was interested in an M.D./Ph.D., but until then I hadn’t fully realized that science wasn’t just something I loved that I got to do in school, but that my education was all leading up to a career I’d do for the rest of my life, and how lucky I was to get to do something I love as my career.
What do you feel was the most important thing that you learned?
ASMSA is a challenging school — not just academically, but also socially because you’re in a new place with new people and new rules you have to follow, at an age where you’re already dealing with trying to figure out who you think you will want to be as an adult. Dealing with all those changes can be really difficult, but that difficulty helps you learn how to handle being stressed. You realize that for most things, discomfort and frustration are temporary, and that if you can deal with the stress right now then eventually either the stressor will end or you’ll have learned to handle whatever it is more easily. Being able to acknowledge that something is difficult but that the discomfort is not going to be there forever is something that has helped to make stressful things more manageable throughout the rest of my training.
Share a favorite quote and/or your favorite book.
My favorite book is anything sci-fi or fantasy. Bonus points for dragons.
There’s a quote that gets attributed to Albert Einstein, but it’s not certain he actually said it. “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
What do you feel are the most important tools for an educator to have in today’s classroom?
Resilience is a trait that’s helpful in any career, but I think teachers in our society are especially asked to be adaptable as they figure out how to deal with the new problems of today’s classrooms and how to best support their students, all with relatively little support from us as a society, given how little most teachers in the U.S. earn and how often we see schools go without proper funding.
What excites you about the future?
Personally, I’m excited to be wrapping up my Ph.D., heading back to finish medical school, and moving towards starting the next part of my training. In general, my lab’s research and a lot of the research I read about and hear about at conferences comes with some really exciting possibilities and gives me hope that relatively soon there could be new strategies to help patients who have infections that are currently very difficult to treat successfully.