TONY: Save this blog: It’s gonna be worth a lot of money some day…

So, I should probably begin by answering the question that I have always answered for people who have seen me on paper before meeting me in person:  “Wow.  Chin-Quee is such an interesting last name.  Where does it come from?”  Allow me to take you on a journey through space and time:  Many moons ago, England had some pretty strong interests both in China and the little Caribbean island of Jamaica.  My great-grandfather agreed to head on over to the tropics from China as an indentured servant, worked on a plantation for a few years, opened up his own ice-cream business, and sent his son (my grandfather) back to China for his education.  Unfortunately things didn’t go as planned, seeing as my grandfather (ever the ladies’ man) chose to have an ‘indiscretion’ with the daughter of his town’s mayor, and as a result was scheduled for a stoning in the town square.  He managed to skip town, hop on the next boat back to Jamaica, where he met my Grandmother, who had a few kids (including my dad), and subsequently moved to New York City.  My parents met each other soon after they both graduated college, and the result?  Anthony L. Chin-Quee Jr., your faithful blogging med student.

I suppose you could call my journey to med school ‘untraditional’.  I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, and attended Harvard for my undergrad years.  I graduated in ’05 with a degree in Sociology, but didn’t come straight to med school.  At that point, I was maybe 80% sure that I wanted to be a doctor, and 20% sure that I wanted to be a teacher.  Thus, I chose to take a year and teach high school Chemistry.  Though it was an amazing and unforgettable experience, I realized early on that I could not do it in the long term—the changes that I felt the need to start making in this world required that I step far beyond the schoolhouse.  And so, the arduous Medical School Application process began—writing essays, making long lists of schools, saving as much money as possible,  etc., etc.  In my second year out of school, I headed back home to NYC and (in between flights out of town for med school interviews) got involved with an amazing non-profit called Portraits of Hope.  I worked with an unbelievable group of people on the city’s largest public art project ever:  Garden in Transit.  If you live in/around NYC you know exactly what it looked like—there were flowers all over the yellow taxis throughout the fall/winter of 2007.  Check this website to get the full story:  www.gardenintransit.org.

After working with GIT for several months, I packed up my entire life and moved to Atlanta to start this crazy med school journey here at Emory.  Why did I choose to come on down here?  The answer is pretty simple.  Yes, Emory has the prestige that any great university has—great professors, amazing opportunities for clinical experiences/research, etc.  Yes, it has a brand new curriculum and the sweetest facilities that you’re going to find anywhere.  But what really sold me on this place was the energy that I felt from the community here at Emory Med both on my interview day and at the revisit weekend.  It felt like family.  Plain and simple.  If you are applying to med schools right now, I’m sure you’ve noted that every school seems to have its own personality.  If I were to write you a blurb about the personality of Emory students, it would include words like ‘passion’, ‘drive’, ‘brilliance’, ‘creativity’, and ‘integrity’.  The professors at this school make it very clear that their goal is to turn out doctors who are not only competent but, perhaps more importantly, human.  So, we are taught to simultaneously hone our skills, and to bring our own gifts, our own personalities, to the profession.  All of this culminates in the creation of a culture that I don’t think that I could find anywhere else.

So yes.  That’s why I came.  Clearly, you should come too.

Until the next go ‘round,

-c-q