Hanna Erickson

I may not be religious, but I am spiritual

April 15, 2013June 26, 20194 Comments

I grew up without organized religion, feeling left out at times such as when my friends would go to youth group together without me or when I’d have dinner with a friend’s family and they would pray before eating. I would try to go to church with my friends every now and then, but it never felt like the place for me; I was much too skeptical of the stories and was offended by how they talked poorly about those who had other religious beliefs or those who at least questioned their religious beliefs. Nonetheless, I did appreciate the desire to help others that religion instills as I have always favored altruism. I was told frequently that some day, I will “find God” and I scoffed at the remark, preferring to attribute my views to my own experiences and understanding.

What these views are exactly has been difficult to describe. For a while I said I was atheist, but after discovering the term, I realized that really I was more agnostic. This was yet too apathetic of a term and after watching David Eagleman’s Possibilian talk, I began to use his active exploration of the possibilities to describe how I saw the world. This is still the best explanation I can form for my beliefs, but these beliefs relate to a much larger topic that no one religion can contain.

Throughout the years, I have continued to be a philanthropist and have become a leader focusing on inspiring others and connecting to the greater world. It is this connection to others and the desire to inspire them that helped me “find God” in my own way. I am not here to advocate for or attack any religion at all but rather to argue that while we have our own religions, there is a greater unifier. My way of “finding God” was to become more aware of myself in the context of the greater world, more aware of what I already believed and who I am as a person, and to appreciate fully not just the belief systems of various religions but the basis of their religions, which is to give meaning to the question: “Why?”

“Why?” Such a short, simple word is yet an endless question to resolve. We begin to try to answer it at a young age when we pester our elders asking “Why?” about everything such as “Why is the sky blue?” “Why don’t dogs talk?” and “Why is snow cold?” As we become older, we become less outwardly obnoxious about it, taking the search for answers into our own hands. We wonder, “Why does one otherwise healthy person get cancer and a relatively unhealthy person does not?” “Why does this person not want to date me?” “Why do people do such hateful and harmful things to others?” and ultimately, “Why do we exist?” All in all, we ask “Why?” to search for meaning in our lives.

This search for meaning can be seen as the source of all of our spirituality. If you’ve feared death, felt sad at the loss of another, or felt love for another, you’re spiritual. If you’ve pondered your purpose in this life, you’re spiritual. If you’ve felt the desire to help improve the lives of others, you’re spiritual. All of these show at least some appreciation that has come from the search for meaning. The belief systems we follow are just ways that we try to answer the same question: “Why?”

As a scientist, I am no less spiritual than any other. Far too often, I see this clash between science and religion, and it pains me to see such narrow minded beliefs. I too ask “Why?” I seek to answer the same questions. I seek to find meaning in the world just as much as any other. I feel compassion toward my fellow man. I believe in the greater good. If anything, being a scientist makes me more spiritual because it lets me actively search for these answers that we all seek.

No matter how each of us rationalizes our existence whether belonging to a certain religion or not, we have a common goal to search for meaning in our lives though we may not consciously realize it. It is this that unites us regardless of which story we believe is true. Understanding this greater unity makes me wonder “Why are so many in the world so closed minded?” “Why are religion and science viewed as distinct entities?” and “Why do we focus so much on the small things that separate us rather than the greater things that unite us?”

If I Could Do It Again

March 29, 2013June 26, 2019Leave a comment

I wrote. Then I rewrote. Then I started over and rewrote again. Soon, the words began to blur together. I couldn’t make sense what I had covered in which piece. I read my work out loud to have a better idea of how it flowed but even still that lost its meaning. I made leaps of logic that I weren’t aware of because it was my own life and my hopes and wishes that I was covering. I was writing medical school personal statements.

Hindsight is 20/20 and since I was near having to reapply this year, I began looking back at my application to plan for try number two. Luckily, my last ditch effort ended up for the best and I have found a home for the next eight years at the University of Illinois. Nonetheless, this process had begun and I wanted it to be worthwhile, so I am sharing it with you! Each person’s statements are different – their experiences, their goals, everything – but perhaps my reflection on my own personal statements will help you write your own.

For your reference you can find my final personal statements here:

MD personal statement: https://mdphdtobe.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/amcas-m-d-personal-statement/

MD/PhD personal statement: https://mdphdtobe.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/amcas-m-d-ph-d-personal-statement/

Research personal statement: https://mdphdtobe.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/amcas-research-personal-statement/

LEARN FROM THE COMPLEXITY OF OTHERS

I used many stories about patients and experiences at the hospital for my MD personal statement. This statement was the one that I spent the most time on, and it was also the one that I am most satisfied with. If I did it again, I would likely use my grandmother’s experience with bladder cancer and ultimately her death as my main story to connect everything. *I would not be cheesy and say that this inspired me to go into medicine, I would emphasize what I learned about the complexity of health (in that it is much more than physical), what I learned about treating the elderly, and what I learned about death.

I was pretty satisfied with my personal statement from last year though, so here’s the things that I got good feedback about:

My story with an elderly man that I met at the hospital was likely the best one I included. I had multiple interviewers show interest in it. It showed that while I understand the importance of science in medicine, I have grown to appreciate the other sides of human health. Our health is extremely complex and is based on physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors, but we are mainly trained to be scientists that focus on the physical component of health as premeds.

I found it helpful to use this statement to show that I am much more than a scientist and can appreciate all the factors that contribute to the well being of others to show my maturity and understanding of health. Actual patient experience to back it up was key. This was my primary concern since I didn’t add M.D. on to my goals until the end of my junior year of college and so I felt that I needed to work harder to show my interest in the human side of medicine to convince committees that I truly wanted the M.D. in addition to the Ph.D.

This emphasis on other factors of health was also incorporated in my interviews. I was asked in one if I believed that there was a psychological factor to health and I responded with a resounding “YES!” I’m taking a health psychology course in my last semester of undergrad (which I highly recommend) that gave me talking points and has helped me understand even more about the complexity of human health still from a researcher’s perspective.

ILLUSTRATE THE COMPLEMENTARY

For my MD/PhD statement, I emphasized the complementary motivation arising from being involved in both clinical and lab endeavors. I said it would help me maintain my motivation and thus would make me a better physician scientist. Then I interviewed for a Medical Scientist Training Program and in one discussion, the professor made me realize how cool it was that when I see someone receiving chemotherapy, I see the drug undergoing chemical reactions such as the drug I study that binds to proteins and DNA. Additionally, I can easily connect simple chemical reactions to a whole body (as I describe here: https://mdphdtobe.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/when-i-synthesize-my-molecule/). If I had done it again, I would have emphasized this by perhaps explicitly describing these observations and how I see them as related. I thought it would be an interesting lead into the statement.

RESEARCH DOESN’T HAVE TO BE BORING

Yeah we’re scientists, but that doesn’t mean we have to only write like one.

Though I was talking about my scientific research experience, that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t make it a story. The people reading your personal statement are highly educated, but they may not be experts in a similar area as you are. You have to educate and excite them about what you’ve done! My research personal statement was mainly about what I actually did in my research and less about my feelings toward research. I did explain why I chose to do the research and why I switched between labs to give a little more meaning to my statement, but my focus was that I understood the time given to research. While it was essential for me to establish that I understand and have experienced the research process, I wish that I had expressed my feelings about research more to the committee.

If I had done it again, I would open by explaining my trials with my research then transition into the first time there was an indication that I had succeeded at making the molecule I was trying to make. I would have talked about how great of a feeling it was to accomplish something that no one had ever done before! This would show that I appreciate not only the difficulty of research but also that I live for the worthwhile feeling of discovery!

I will update this as I think of other things. Best of luck on your applications! And never forget to let your passion shine through. 🙂

When I Synthesize My Molecule

March 29, 2013June 26, 2019Leave a comment

When I synthesize my standard molecule in a reaction consisting of a drug, guanine, and cysteine for biological analysis in my lab, I see it not just as organic chemistry but also as a reaction in the body. It is a simplified biological system. The cysteine is part of a large protein and the DNA is part of an even larger chromosome. The drug has already been infused into the blood stream, distributed throughout the body while associating and dissociating with various biomolecules, absorbed into the cells, and has now entered the nucleus of a cancer cell. When the reaction occurs inside the cell as it is occurring on my lab bench, it will create a lesion to the DNA so bulky that it could stop DNA replication requiring either repair or apoptosis of the cell (ideally) thus killing the cancer cell.

It is so much more than understanding organic chemistry and performing a chemical reaction. It is looking at a specific part of that drug’s effect on the body and seeking to understand it on a molecular level. Yes, the drug is effective at treating certain cancers, but it is also useful to know why the drug is so capable. If we look to further understanding the chemical interactions that occur, perhaps we can be able to design future generation drugs from this drug to improve the efficacy and specificity of treatment to better eradicate cancer.

But we wouldn’t understand it if we didn’t have chemistry.

The Difference a Year Makes

March 28, 2013July 18, 20183 Comments

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” –Bilbo Baggins

A year ago, I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I had it all planned out. For years I knew what I wanted was to get my PhD, become a professor of pharmacology, and research the design of anticancer drugs. It was straightforward and it is what I had prepared for years to do. All I had to do was commit 5 or so years to graduate school, a few years to post doctoral training, and my career could begin. Then on March 14, 2012, just two days before taking the GRE in my junior year of college, I sat in my lab researching schools for graduate school and discovered the Medical Scientist Training Program and was swept off to somewhere I never thought I would be.

With a controlling father who worked in the medical field and insisted that I become a doctor, I was exposed to yet repulsed by medicine from a young age. Luckily, I was not completely pushed away from health careers. As a teenager, I would have to defend pharmacy as a legitimate medical career, which he felt was beneath my potential. The same occurred in college as my goals shifted to medical research and drug design as he lacked an appreciation of the importance of scientific research in medicine. While the differences between these careers are subtle in scope, he made them feel like polar opposites. This polarity made considering pursuing an MD along with a PhD not a slight deviation in my life, but a complete revolution.

Such a major life decision is not made in minutes or hours but in days. Thirty-four days to be precise. I tried to keep my dilemma on the down low, eager to not lead my friends to think that I would be settling if, after deliberation, I chose to only pursue a Ph.D. Perhaps it was also so that I would not feel that way myself. I met with my advisor about it who referred me to a pharmacology professor who suggested I speak with the director of the Medical Scientist Training Program on campus. While I hoped that these meetings would help me find an answer, they only gave me more questions. I caved and had to make my friends and family aware, and with a simple tweet on April 17, I found my answer. “Do the dual degree program. Then you can never regret not doing it.” My mom’s cousin said what I know now was the answer in the back of my head the whole time.

The decision was made. I signed up for the MCAT, a test students fret over for months or even years, giving myself a single month following the school year to prepare myself mentally and intellectually for the most important test that I have ever taken. Luckily, having taken the GRE and the chemistry GRE in the three months before the test while completing a difficult semester had me in the focused mindset for such preparation. As the kind of person that will buy a textbook not required for class and read it during breaks from school, I actually enjoyed studying for the test. I took a broad range of science courses including the pre-med requirements “for fun” so studying for the test was essentially just review of my first three years of college, a well-received refresher. While studying, I pushed myself past the point of exhaustion to delirium, unknown until after taking the exam. That day, June 21, I came across pictures of sleeping cats on the internet I and laughed so hard I cried before taking one of the best naps of my life! (Seriously, check them out: http://www.buzzfeed.com/paws/awkward-cat-sleeping-positions and http://www.buzzfeed.com/paws/more-awkward-cat-sleeping-positions). Nonetheless, I survived and my score was just one below my ridiculously high goal. I had overcome one major milestone in my pursuit of an acceptance to the program.

Reading, memorizing, and taking practice tests to prepare for the MCAT and taking the actual test, that was easy. What was much more difficult was the personal journal of self-understanding that I undertook over the next month as I wrote my personal statements. Between the MD, MD/PhD, and research statements, I have 45 documents of various versions of these statements saved on my computer that can document this journey. I learned to verbalize my aspirations, realized my values, and remembered experiences in my life that were long forgotten but had actually helped shape my career goals. At my receptionist job, I spent the whole time writing just to go to my research job and spend my down time there writing as well. As I volunteered in an oncology clinic, as I walked around campus, and as I fell asleep at night, I would brainstorm ways to better these statements. I truly lived and breathed my writing and a month after taking the MCAT, I submitted my AMCAS application on July 25 much more aware of who I am as a person than before I undertook the task.

Since then, I have written dozens of secondary applications, paid $1,500 in application fees, and continued to push myself through college knowing that I would need to keep up this pace in medical school. Instead of taking basic science courses like green chemistry and human genetics, I decided to take courses like science writing and health psychology to help prepare me for other ways of thinking than the technical pure scientific mindset. My hard work on my application paid off and I was invited to interview at the University of Minnesota on December 21. While I did not get in, I learned even more about myself, realizing how special it was to feel so excited about something so small as being able to do a reaction that no one has done before or how cool it was that when I see a person getting chemotherapy, I see the chemical reactions going on inside their body. This experience made me appreciate my four years at the University of Minnesota so much more and prepared me for my next medical school interview.

Today, February 28, 2013, nearly a year after I was swept away by the opportunities available for me to combine science and medicine, I go to interview at the University of Illinois’s Medical Scholar’s Program. Never in my life did I seriously imagine that I would be destined for medical school, and now I am interviewing for the second one. It is things like this that show that we are always growing, no matter how certain we are about our lives. Had I not been so open minded to other opportunities, I would have never considered this program and would never have felt so enlightened about my path in life. But this is not the end. Who knows where I will expand my horizons next, but I await the opportunity.

Featured photo source: Day to Night at Bag End by Tanya Willis | Shift Art

AMCAS M.D. Personal Statement

March 28, 2013June 26, 2019Leave a comment

When applying to medical school, whether you’re applying to MD or MD/PhD, you will have to write a personal statement regarding your reasons for pursuing a career in medicine. This statement, with a limit of 5,300 characters, is a great opportunity to let your passion shine through and complement your GPA, MCAT score, and extracurriculars to convince admission committees that you would be an excellent addition to their program. As an example, here’s my MD personal statement:

Lying beneath the linear accelerator, I put myself in a patient’s position. I was eager to understand what it felt like to have cancer, to familiarize myself with the fear, worry, and pain of the life-threatening disease and its dangerous treatment. As I looked up at the machine, I wondered what it would feel like to have radiation directed at my body. Did it hurt? Did it not? Despite these insecurities, I was reassured, had I been a patient, that I would have the doctors’ undivided attention and vast medical knowledge helping me through the therapy. I had seen these doctors in action earlier when I looked in on a patient being prepped for this treatment, and I admired the bond that the doctors had formed with the patient based on trust and understanding to ensure them that they are in good hands. It is experiences like this one in radiation oncology that continue to attract me to becoming a physician.

As a girl who knew little of medical science at the time, I was nonetheless captivated by the complexity of medicine and aspired to be more involved in the healthcare community. I became a volunteer and immersed myself in various areas around the hospital, learning to appreciate all of the workers who make both a direct and indirect impact on patients’ lives. As a volunteer, my favorite phrase to tell patients has been “if you need anything, just let me know.” I pride myself in being able to ensure them that I will do everything I can to help meet their needs though it was not until I met a 97-year-old patient in a nursing unit that I realized the full depth of that phrase. Alone and recovering from surgery, he needed someone to talk to more than anything, and his face lit up as I told him that I would be happy to sit with him. While we talked, I learned that his wife had recently died, that they never had children because they could not afford it, and that he was restricted to living the rest of his life between the nursing home and the hospital. Empathizing with his struggles and his loneliness, I helped him feel connected to another person to reduce these emotional pains. I then understood that the phrase could provide even more comfort to a patient than the physical relief I had initially intended.

Ambitiously, I desire to further serve patients’ needs by using my interest in research to complement my work in the clinic. Being a scientifically curious and innovative individual, I am optimistic about the opportunities for the advancement of knowledge regarding the chemical, biological, and physiological interactions that comprise human life, and I want to be on the cutting edge of such discovery. I have already begun to be involved in such medically relevant research in medicinal chemistry so that I can study how carcinogens chemically react with biological molecules to have a mutagenic effect. As an interdisciplinary scientist, I have learned to combine multiple angles on a situation such as that of a chemist and a biologist to more completely understand it, which can help me translate scientific information to clinically relevant techniques. This is also an ability I hope to emulate as a doctor to recognize and address the intricacies of medical ailments from their scientific basis and systemic effects to their psychological and social impacts on the lives of patients and their families.

As I have explored careers in medicine, pharmacy, and science, I have become passionate about cancer, and I want to combine my intellectual interest, ambition, and compassion to do everything that I can for patients as an oncologist. Other than its challenging conceptual complexity and opportunity for expansion, I am attracted to this specialty because of the longevity of the disease’s effects that enable formation of strong doctor-patient relationships as I have seen in my volunteer work in an oncology intravenous infusion suite. My most touching observation was when I helped a woman on her last day of a round of chemotherapy by taking her picture with various nurses and doctors that were a major part of her treatment. I admire that these medical professionals have made such an influence on her life that she wants to commemorate it in photographic memory. As she left, she did not say goodbye but instead said see you next time; it is determined patients like her who inspire me to be more involved in oncology and its research to see that I do everything that I can to help them win their fight against cancer. Although I desire the lasting connection to patients, I would much rather see them healthy than having to return for multiple rounds of treatment.

Valuing knowledge, I have placed myself in positions to try to better empathize with patients’ experiences and to appreciate the role of doctors and other medical professionals in their care. Through such learning experiences, I have become passionate about understanding and treating cancer, and I am determined to be more involved in the complex health care system by bridging the gap between science and medicine to best serve those afflicted with the disease. I take pride in my ability as an interdisciplinary scientist and I believe that I can use that skill to complement my work as an oncologist so that I can combat cancer as a true physician-scientist.

AMCAS M.D./Ph.D. Personal Statement

March 28, 2013June 26, 20193 Comments

For those applying to MD/PhD programs, you will have to complement your MD personal statement with a MD/PhD statement and a research statement. The MD/PhD statement has a 3,600 character limit and serves to strengthen your argument why you want to do both MD and PhD. As an example, here is my MD/PhD personal statement:

As an undergraduate, I have begun to experience the complementarity of medicine and scientific research. I now understand that clinical work as a physician requires not only application of the scientific principles learned throughout college and medical school, but also requires compassion and an interest in the personal side of health care. For me, this interest was reignited by my experience in research where I learned more about the effects of cancer and had first hand experience in the search for a better understanding of the disease. From learning about the devastating effects of the disease and the efforts that doctors and researchers are putting forth to improve treatment of it, I was inspired to resume volunteering at the hospital, doing anything I could to be more involved.

My research inspires me to pursue medicine, and now, my experience in the hospital motivates my efforts in the lab. In my current research, I have found that at first, I easily became discouraged when, after seven months of trying multiple methods for synthesizing a single molecule, another attempt fails. Before I began to volunteer in the intravenous infusion suite, I reacted to such difficulties with near resentment of my work, at times, and continued to try just to reach the end goal set for me. Now that I have returned to the clinic as a volunteer, I have found new motivation in some of my more straining times in the lab. At the end of a long workweek, while infusing my sample only to find that the product degraded or was not formed at all, I remember my morning in the clinic and the patients that I met. I regain my optimism and drive much faster, as I remember that I am not only doing this for myself or for the scientific knowledge, but for them.

Through my learning experiences in the lab and the clinic, I have become passionate about cancer and want the next eight years to prepare me for spending the rest of my life devoted to doing as much as I can to help improve the lives of those affected. Clinical and lab work now seem to be individually inadequate options for my ambition. Rather, with the training of an MD/PhD program, I hope to bridge the gap between these two areas of interest to become an academic oncologist to more broadly contribute to the fight against cancer. I look forward to making discoveries in the lab and being able to apply them in the clinic. I also want to amplify my training and experience to help teach a new generation of doctors and researchers to not only be able to excel at their own areas of focus, but to gain an understanding of a broader range of experiences and ways of thought. I believe in the ability to utilize the complementarity of these roles to maintain my motivation and compassion, to contribute novel and useful knowledge, to influence future generations, and to ultimately make the greatest impact toward making the lives of patients and their families better.