First and foremost, CONGRATULATIONS to all my friends who just graduated college.
Wow. Time flies by so fast...
It's a good thing I took that extra year of high school. Despite how much I really would like to get on with my life and do what I feel like I'm called to do (and have been since the very early years of my life), I'm feeling totally lost. I don't understand how someone can go to school with no idea what discipline they want to study/major in. I know exactly what it is I want to do, but even then there are so many options and I don't know which is best. A year ago you could have asked me if I was going to go to graduate school, and I would have given you a very blunt "nah, probably not." However, because grad school is more or less expected/required these days for any decent job, I was playing with the ideas of immunology, molecular biology, epidemiology, etc. Then, one day in the fall I was researching a statistic online for some class, and found the title for what I think I'd like to do: International/Global Public Health. I've got my heart set on Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, possibly the 9 months of classes + 2 years of Peace Corps degree path.
Two days ago (and indeed, for my entire life) you could have asked me if I wanted to go to med school, and I would have said "no way in hell would I ever want to be a doctor."
Today, I'm looking at the infectious disease programs at various medical schools and....thinking about it.
I don't want to put in more time. And I sure don't want to put in any more money. At the same time, I want to be so good and so knowledgeable about what I do that I actually TRULY make a difference. That takes time, effort, and training, which doesn't necessarily mean school, but a PhD or M.D. next to your name automatically puts your word/thought ahead of the M.A. or B.A. or MHS or any number of lesser acronyms.
Anyway, enough on that. I've got all summer to think through it, and I'm surrounded by people who can give me lots of good advice. My summer internship is in D.C. at the National Institutes of Health, in a malaria drug resistance research lab. Tomorrow marks the end of my first week in the lab, and so far it's been great.
In other news, school ended back at the end of April, and then I took a May Term which was mostly spent catching iguanas in the Bahamas. I got lots of sun and a nice tan, enjoyed snorkeling for the first time, bathed in the rich blues, and got some good field biology research experience. ^_^
It's a good thing I took that extra year of high school. Despite how much I really would like to get on with my life and do what I feel like I'm called to do (and have been since the very early years of my life), I'm feeling totally lost. I don't understand how someone can go to school with no idea what discipline they want to study/major in. I know exactly what it is I want to do, but even then there are so many options and I don't know which is best. A year ago you could have asked me if I was going to go to graduate school, and I would have given you a very blunt "nah, probably not." However, because grad school is more or less expected/required these days for any decent job, I was playing with the ideas of immunology, molecular biology, epidemiology, etc. Then, one day in the fall I was researching a statistic online for some class, and found the title for what I think I'd like to do: International/Global Public Health. I've got my heart set on Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, possibly the 9 months of classes + 2 years of Peace Corps degree path.
Two days ago (and indeed, for my entire life) you could have asked me if I wanted to go to med school, and I would have said "no way in hell would I ever want to be a doctor."
Today, I'm looking at the infectious disease programs at various medical schools and....thinking about it.
I don't want to put in more time. And I sure don't want to put in any more money. At the same time, I want to be so good and so knowledgeable about what I do that I actually TRULY make a difference. That takes time, effort, and training, which doesn't necessarily mean school, but a PhD or M.D. next to your name automatically puts your word/thought ahead of the M.A. or B.A. or MHS or any number of lesser acronyms.
Anyway, enough on that. I've got all summer to think through it, and I'm surrounded by people who can give me lots of good advice. My summer internship is in D.C. at the National Institutes of Health, in a malaria drug resistance research lab. Tomorrow marks the end of my first week in the lab, and so far it's been great.
In other news, school ended back at the end of April, and then I took a May Term which was mostly spent catching iguanas in the Bahamas. I got lots of sun and a nice tan, enjoyed snorkeling for the first time, bathed in the rich blues, and got some good field biology research experience. ^_^