JACKIE: On Life and Emory

Hi folks. My name is Jackie Carr and I am from Miami, Florida. (Actually I just say I’m from Miami but really I’m from a suburb of Ft Lauderdale approximately 23 minutes from Miami). I am 28 years old and am therefore one of the “older” members of the class of 2011. If you’re going to be an “older” student, by the way, then I do recommend Emory SOM. The students here are generally quite sophisticated and cultured, I have found. We tend to think outside of the (sometimes restrictive) medical school box. But I digress… I went to Stanford University, where I majored in Philosophy, and graduated in 2002. I lived in SF for the two years following college, where I researched foster care in California for Human Rights Watch. (I also waited tables and hung out with the rappers and skaters and had an all-around good time.) Then I moved to NYC to attend Columbia’s post-bac program, which took me an entire two years to complete since I had done no premed classes at Stanford. This past year, before coming to Emory, I worked full-time at the Vascular Tissue Engineering Lab of NYU’s Institute for Reconstructive Plastic Surgery. Scattered throughout those years were your more-or-less standard, overly ambitious pre-medical activities (e.g. interning in the Neurosurgery Unit of Bangkok’s largest public university hospital for the summer).

Moving on from my personal history, M1 year of medical school has been great so far (though Anatomy has posed a major challenge, I must admit). Emory really encourages learning for learning’s sake, the importance of maintaining a sense of self, the necessity of true teamwork, and other progressive, humanitarian aspects of medicine that I believe are crucial to medical education (at least my medical education). My fellow students are bright, enthusiastic, down-to-earth, kind, pleasant individuals, and I am very happy to be at Emory. The school is especially fitting for someone like me who has taken time off and experienced life outside of school. Our curriculum consistently applies what we learn in class to outside-of-academia situations, and I rarely feel confined to the difficult-to-utilize classroom learning. In addition, our new curriculum translates the (loads of) basic science we learn in the classroom to medical practice, and therefore makes learning science all the more interesting. So, to summarize, I am thoroughly enjoying the philosophy, academics, and people here at Emory’s SOM…