My Undergrad Degree (s)

56 Days to Go.

To be honest, having an undergraduate degree doesn’t feel any different than not having one. Part of that could be that the diploma itself is still in the mail. Even so, I don’t think that the official document will make much difference. Because I am an overachiever (and thanks to some lucky double dipping requirements), I actually got two degrees in undergrad (but I only paid for one! Take that, state of Connecticut!).

As a prospective medical student, I was lucky in that I didn’t really need to learn any actually marketable skills. My first degree, which I had almost entirely finished by the end of sophomore year, was the more medically focused one: I had always heard that a BS in Biology was the best degree to have as a pre-med student (Other than Biomedical Engineering, and frankly, my math skills were never at what one would call an “Engineering” level). The degree nicely dovetailed with the pre-medicine suggested requirements (and the actual requirements for most medical schools). I capped off my “biology” education with a research thesis, one of the worst experiences of my life.

I think I’ll have to wait for the dust to settle for a few years to see if it actually helped any of my applications, but writing that paper was one of the most painful things I ever did. The writing itself wasn’t a huge problem, but the experiments were. I had been lucky enough (so I thought) to be accepted in the research lab of a relatively prominent (at least a few years ago) virologist. Just for a point of reference to establish his level of expectations from his students; one of his grad students (David Baltimore, about 30 years ago) won the Nobel Prize. The lab only took a couple of honors students every few years. Because of the “hands-off” approach, I was able to essentially work independently, which was a radical departure from the way things usually worked. Most times, an undergrad is assigned to a grad student, who would make them do the simplest, least important, and most unpleasant experiments as part of their own (the grad’s) project. In my case, I was given my own project (an ambitious one), taught some of the basics, and set loose.

At first, it worked out great: I could come into the lab on my schedule, I didn’t have to report to anyone except my advisor, and I had plenty of time (years!) to worry about results. And, for the first couple of semesters, it really did work. The results I had didn’t mean much, I had only really covered about a paragraph’s worth of my potential thesis, but I had heard that just handing in a coherent paper got you an automatic “A”. I was told that it was more of a rite of passage than an actual evaluation of my academic progress.

During the first semester of my senior year, with the actual due date starting to loom, things started to go horribly wrong. Literally every experiment I would try would fail. Some became infected with mold that grew due to the dust floating around the lab as it was being renovated. Once I solved that problem (by putting a fungicide in all of my cell media) the results still made no sense. It turned out my advisor had given me the wrong dilutions of some of the viruses I was using. After that was fixed, finally usable results- except the cells in the control plates were all dead. After that, a problem with some of the cells we needed to purchase from an outside company. After that, some results that were too good to be true (they weren’t true). Time kept running out. Finally, the week of finals at the end of the spring semester.

I had one week to produce a usable paper from one experiment’s worth of results. (I should have had pages and pages of results to work from: I had about half a page). I drew some incredibly tenuous inferences out of that half-page. I made some half-assed graphs. I was afraid that I would fail, that there was no way I’d be able to graduate after turning in such a terrible thesis. I emailed the paper to my advisor (I was too embarrassed to hand it in in person).

I got a B.

I was so immensely relieved that it didn’t matter to me what grade I got, so long as I passed. To be entirely honest, it was mostly my fault that it turned out the way it did. It also didn’t mean that my entire biology was wasted. I actually really enjoyed most of what I learned, aside from writing that awful, hell of a thesis.

My second undergraduate degree was an accident. During the middle of sophomore year I was stuck in a slump. I didn’t think that any of my classes were useful in any way to me. (Looking back, I’m pretty sure I was right). I’ve since learned that that is a relatively common attitude among college sophomores. (Nerdy side note: I learned that in a class for Resident Assistants that was essentially a sociology of college class. I’d absolutely recommend that if you can devote the time to it, be an RA. You end up learning a lot about yourself. Also it never hurts to be above the rules.)

                In the midst of my rut, I had to select classes for the spring semester. The way that things ended up working out, I was essentially locked into the “second half” of most of my classes, so I only had one or two slots open for electives. I took “Intro to Weightlifting” for two credits. (To be clear, UConn does not have a gym requirement, this was purely my attempt to waste my own money and time). In an effort to find something, anything that might be relevant to medicine, I typed the keyword “medical” into the class search dialog box on the registration website. A few hits came up, but most had prerequisites. Purely out of curiosity I clicked on the link to “Medical Anthropology.” Kayleigh had taken an “Anthropology through Film” class the semester before, and she seemed to enjoy it. Without really having any idea what it was about, and desperate to learn something I considered worthwhile, I signed up for the class.

                It met Monday nights from 5:30PM to 8:30PM. It was a three hour lecture in a crowded, stuffy classroom filled almost entirely with upperclassmen I did not know at all (as a “science” major at a large University, I had very little contact with “non-science” kids). The class met for the first time the second week of the semester (we had the first Monday off for Martin Luther King Day). I took my seat at the run down, graffiti covered desk and looked around the room. There were about 30 of us, and most people seemed to know each other. The class was probably about 70% female.

                Until that point my classes had been taught by old distinguished looking professors, usually dressed in business casual. The person who walked to the head of the class was entirely different. She looked about thirty. She was dressed in a simple black t-shirt and jeans. Half of her head was chopped short, the other side hung to her shoulder. Hear arms and neck were covered in tattoos. She introduced herself as “Susie.” She had just finished her PhD. She asked us to each tell the class our names, why we were in Anthropology, and our home towns. I waited my turn. Most people, unsurprisingly, were from Connecticut. I listened to all the other students, trying to find an acceptable reason for my presence. After about two-thirds of the class had gone, my turn came.

                “Uh… I’m Aaron. I’m from Long Valley, New Jersey, and… Uh…” I started, not sure how it was going to end, “I don’t know what Anthropology is.”

                The class laughed. Not a great sign, since this was a 3000 level course.

                Susie replied, “Oh Long Valley? I grew up there! My Mom teaches math at the middle school!”

                Small world.

The rest of the class introduced themselves. She started to explain that Medical Anthropology was the study of health and human systems of health. Despite my unfamiliarity with many of the theories she was discussing as if the class knew them already (They did), I found myself utterly fascinated. After the first night of lecture, I went to my advisor and asked how I could get a minor in Anthropology.

The class only got more interesting. We talked about cultures I had never heard of growing up in isolated rural New Jersey. We learned the power of ritual and shamanism, about culture-bound syndromes, diseases unique to other cultures. We learned about what it meant to be healthy and the extremely varied continuum over which conceptions about health existed. We read “The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down”, a fascinating book about Lia Lee, a Hmong infant diagnosed with Epilepsy living with her family in Merced, California. Lia’s doctors prescribed the best treatments they knew in order to control her disease. She didn’t get better, and the seizures continued. After several months, Lia’s physicians discovered she had not been taking the medication. Instead she had been treated by a Hmong Shaman. The book chronicled the struggle between tradition and modernity, with the fate of a child in the middle. What I drew from it was the lesson that a physician needs to understand how a patient understands their own condition, regardless of their cultural origin, in order to work with them together towards a cure. Lia’s parents had no way of understanding the concept of the medicine she had been prescribed. They assumed, when she suffered serious side effects, that the drugs did not work. In Hmong medicine, there were no side effects; one either got better or they didn’t. The Hmong thought that Epilepsy was caused by being “caught” by a dab (an evil spirit). Lia’s physicians didn’t (at first) take the time to understand how the Lees saw their daughter’s illness, and failed to understand that they were trying as best they knew how to make her well, in the same way the doctors were.

It influenced the kind of physician I’d like to be, and even came up in a few interviews. After the next semester, that minor turned into a double major, and a semester after that, an additional degree- a BA in Anthropology. It also led me to one of the best experiences of my life; a research internship at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, something I’m continuing this semester. I had no idea when I started college what Anthropology even was. I’m glad I got the chance to learn, and I’ll be doing whatever I can to integrate what I learned into my future life.

It’s far from the first time I’ve been absolutely, completely wrong about something. As hard as the last two years of school were (I took over 20 credits in a semester twice, and 19 most of the other times), getting that second degree was worth every penny I didn’t spend.

I guess part of the reason that graduation didn’t feel any different is that I already feel like I earned it. It was a sigh of relief. I got through it, the good parts and the bad, and now I’m ready to take the next step, to medical school.