Personal Statement

Through my three years as a neuroscience major, through discussions with physicians and medical students, and—I’ll admit it—through a few seasons of medical drama binge-watching on Netflix, I have become intensely fascinated by the surgical field. Maybe it’s my Type-A personality, or my love for hands-on problem solving, but as soon as I was eligible to shadow in the operating room, I jumped on the opportunity to observe Dr. Lola Chambless, who also happens to be Vanderbilt’s first ever female professor of neurosurgery.

I was specifically searching for a female physician mentor because, the more people I told about my abstract, distant-future interest in surgery, the more people responded with surprise. A family friend, who happens to be a neurosurgeon, texted my father, “Really? She knows neurosurgeons eat their young, right?”

Jokes aside, one of the more insidious and common narratives that seemed woven into people’s responses to my newfound interest was one that considered an intensive track like surgery a death sentence for my ability to marry and start a family. Even my stepmom, who is herself a physician, made it sound like I had to choose—one, or the other. Surgery, or motherhood.

When I met Dr. Chambless, I was curious and filled with trepidation—what kind of powerhouse was this woman, to have an 11-page CV at age thirty-five? “She must be unmarried, or something,” I thought, somehow not realizing that I was buying into the same hypocrisy I’d been hearing from people around me. “There’s no way she can do all of that.”

Not fifteen minutes into our first conversation, Dr. Chambless looked at her phone as a text tone went off. She sighed, laughing, and turned to one of the clinic nurses, saying, “Look at this picture of the girls. They’re going to the pumpkin patch.”

I was floored. Here was a physician who had entered what, from hearsay, seemed to be one of the most intense specialties in medicine—and she had two young daughters. I immediately saw Dr. Chambless as a mentor, not only for my future as a physician, but for my future as a woman—as someone who could give me some idea of how on earth to have a successful career in medicine and a fulfilling life outside of the O.R.

The first few clinics that I shadowed passed without incident, if there is such a thing for neurosurgeons—routine post-op checkups, discussions with patients about chronic pain or benign cysts or future surgeries. However, the third time I went in to the clinic, several patients in a row received news that clearly shook them to their core. One of them, a woman, was alone, and when Dr. Chambless explained what her CT scan showed, she began to cry. Her diagnosis affected her future—immediate, unpredictable, and chronic. Her ability to have children. Her ability to raise them.

Wiping away her tears, the patient attempted to apologize for becoming so emotional. Dr. Chambless just shook her head, dismissing the notion as absurd. She told the patient that, in her residency program, she was the only woman in her class, and she decided early on that she would not allow herself to cry in the hospital.

“So, I made myself wait until I got to the parking garage,” she said, passing a box of tissues to the patient as I sat in a chair in the corner of the room, in awe of how calm and reassuring her demeanor was. “And then I would break down, just absolutely bawl. But now, I can’t cry in the hospital. It’s only when I get to the parking garage.”

When the patient had calmed down, Dr. Chambless reviewed her scans with her and began to chat with her. It turned out that the two had a mutual friend in common, and in ten minutes, they were laughing and swapping stories. When the patient left the clinic, she was smiling. She seemed hopeful, even optimistic, about managing her diagnosis. She waved goodbye to us and turned the corner.

Dr. Chambless heaved a sigh, the kind that sounded like someone letting a heavy load drop from their arms. She turned to me, and explained, “I could offer her no surgical treatment. What I could offer her, though, was to be there for her. I couldn’t let her leave when she was so upset, especially when she came alone. So I talked with her. Sometimes it’s all you can do.”

That interaction, and the compassion and empathy inherent within it, has stayed with me so much more thoroughly than any incredible procedure I’ve seen in the operating room. The intensity of Dr. Chambless’s career had not made her hard, or callous. It had made her caring, and intuitive, and I saw in her in that moment exactly the kind of doctor I dream of becoming. Medicine is so much more than miracle treatments and cures. It is being imparted with the honor of caring for the lives of those around us. It is being able to give my grandmother an entire year more than glioblastoma multiform wanted for her, and leaving me with vague memories of wearing her wig, drifting off to sleep with her in a rocking chair. It is providing hope, as often as we can, for as many people as we can.

When I think of the difficulty inherent in a task endowed with such softness and such nurturing warmth, I am surprised that anyone would think that surgery and motherhood are anything less than perfectly suited for each other.

Describe the community in which you were nurtured or spent the majority of your early development with respect to its demographics. What core values did you receive and how will these translate into the contributions that you hope to make to your community as a medical student and to your career in medicine? What improvements do you think might make the described community better?

Almost everyone I have met since moving to Nashville for school has asked me, at one point or another, "what is it like in Jackson, Mississippi?" Generally my response is to ask them how much time they have, because explaining Mississippi is no easy task.

Sense memories float in front of my eyes--heat swimming on the cracked asphalt in July, the default warm smiles we wear for all strangers, the softness of green fields passing for miles and miles on either side of a two-lane highway. I hear the dialect, which sounds something like honey melting into tea, like the way old lamp-light might sound. There is a fierce loyalty among those of us who have spent even a portion of our time in the Magnolia State. It is a sibling love, an "only I can talk about my family that way" kind of love. Even three years after moving away, I am still sifting through my seemingly endless Deep South inheritance.

Jackson is a bifurcated city--Interstate-55 slices across it with finality, separating East and West Jackson for a wide stretch into historic suburbs with beautifully cultivated lawns on one side, and government housing on the other. In some ways, it is firmly cemented in the late 1960s. One of the private schools near my house did not graduate a student of color until 2001. Racism is sometimes overt, but more often it is a subtle raising of eyebrows, or a mom staying with her daughter when she came to play at my house because our neighborhood was too close to downtown for comfort. My mother always told me two things about this: that if they actually spent time in our neighborhood, they'd understand; and that we didn't want to live fenced-in anyway. She also taught me to hold my keys between my knuckles, and to check my rearview mirrors before getting out of my car when I got home late at night.

Much of my identity grew out of my high school, an Episcopal institution with a broad liberal arts curriculum that allowed me to take classes like Cloning, Transgenics, and Bioethics alongside AP English. We were a tight-knit community, and challenged each other to grow and learn every day. After spending our afternoons working on college essays in Starbucks and dreaming of life outside of Jackson, we would then spend our nights screaming ourselves hoarse on the sidelines of the football field and taking up six tables at Sonic until two in the morning. From my fellow St. Andrew's Saints, I learned that families are more than the people you share a house with, and to always look out for your own.

I could write pages and pages about Mississippi. It is a compulsion that emerges as soon as you cross that boundary into the world beyond, and I think it's the same compulsion that racked Faulkner, or Eudora Welty, whose house I ran past every day in high school. It is wild and sprawling and I simply would not be the same if I had not grown up there. I suppose this can be said of all hometowns, but to me, Jackson has given me a set of unshakeable values that I carry with me in my pursuit of medicine. One: everyone has a story. Two: meet all people with genuine warmth. Three: in the language of the Episcopal liturgy, respect the dignity of every human being. Four: almost all problems can be solved by a day of hard work and a glass of sweet tea. And finally: never forget where you came from.

Describe a situation where you failed. What did you learn from the experience? Describe at least one functional impact of the experience.

Last semester, I was enrolled in Biochemistry, a class notorious among Vanderbilt pre-med students for its difficulty. While I entered the class with a certain level of trepidation, I also felt that it simply couldn't be that hard. Just like my other science classes, I would dedicate extra time to the material, and I would be fine. Although I attended every lecture before the first test, my notes were halfhearted at best, as I was convinced that the slides and textbook would provide me with all the information I would need to succeed.

The night before the first test, I began to realize I had underestimated the sheer volume of material that would be covered. I sat in my apartment at my kitchen table at 1am, struggling to stay awake after a week full of late-night assignments and rehearsals. Finally, I decided I was probably worrying too much.

The next week, I picked up my test and turned the first page to see a red number staring back at me.

62.

Sixty-two? I racked my brain, trying to decide if I had ever done that poorly on a test in college. I thought that, in freshman General Chemistry, I had mastered studying. The number on my test disagreed with me. I entered the next two lectures red-faced and angry, wondering if I just wasn't cut out for this level of difficult material.

A few days later, I vented to my mom on the phone about my grade. "Haven't you dealt with this before?" she asked me, confused. "You'll just have to study harder for the next one."

I started to tell her that I'd done everything I could for the first test—I'd read the textbook, I'd retyped my notes, I'd been in every lecture! She interrupted my monologue. "There's got to be something else you can do. You just have to want it."

When I spoke to my dad and my stepmom, they each echoed the sentiment—start studying earlier, prepare harder. I began paying close attention in lecture and asking questions. I looked over my notes after classes, rewriting them by hand. In short, I applied all of the tools I already had at my disposal.

The difference was astronomical. My grade shot up from the first to the second test, and my midterm deficiency went away overnight. Even with that first grade, I ended up with a B in the class, after making ten points above the average on the final exam.

I recognize that, in the scheme of things, this is a minor failure. I am lucky to have largely confined my failures to the realm of academics at this point in my life. However, this experience was striking because I did not need to fail. I had all of the tools I needed, but I rushed through my studying and ignored the signs that I was not prepared. The stakes are low when the outcome is a test grade, but when the test is a surgery, and the stakes are a patient's life, it will be crucial for me to truly do everything I can.

In my future medical practice, I know that I will fail. I might make the wrong call, or simply make an error of judgment that will compromise a patient's health. However, those failures should never be because I did not prepare. I hope that, when I am a doctor, I will remember what now seems like a trivial experience and be reminded that much of my success, and the safety of those I care for, is in my own hands.

What has been your most humbling experience and how will that experience affect your interactions with your peers and patients?

During the summer after my freshman year, I worked full-time at my summer camp as the kitchen Permanent Staff member. For twelve weeks, I unloaded the Sysco food truck, prepared the salad bar, stocked the canteen, and manhandled sixty-gallon trash bags into the dumpster. It was exhausting work, but I took pride in it, striving to make my area, the dining hall, run as smoothly as possible.

I reapplied for staff the next January, fully expecting to get re-hired, and feeling that I had given my all to the job the first time around. When my phone rang the evening after my interview, I leapt up from my spot on the couch at home to take the call. The camp coordinator was on the other line, and my heart pounded as he cleared his throat to speak.

"Unfortunately," he began, and I felt my stomach do an uncomfortable flip, "we weren't able to find a spot for you on staff this year."

"Oh," was all I could say. "Okay. Thanks."

I spent the rest of the day in tears. Camp has always been an incredibly important place for me--it shaped me as a camper, and has given me the opportunity to serve and be served at Special Session for the past six years. This job rejection made me feel like that joy, the place itself, was being taken away from me.

I later learned that some of the staff who ran different sessions of camp hadn't liked the way I had done certain parts of my job, which required balancing my kitchen duties with supply runs, stocking the canteen, and being available for other odd tasks. None of the directors had mentioned any of these concerns to me throughout the summer. Even more jarring was hearing from one of the directors who I am close to that many of them thought I was "bossy." This particular word embarrassed and angered me, as I have only ever heard it used to describe women in leadership, never men. However, regardless of any bias leveled against me by the predominantly-male camp directors, I had to recognize that my efforts to do my job in a new way had upset people. Never before had I been in a situation that required me to confront criticisms in my performance of a job.

When I called my best friend that night, she asked me what I had gotten out of the summer I had spent at camp. I paused for thought.

"I learned how to serve behind the scenes, I guess," I mused. "And how to balance several different jobs. And how to do work well just for the sake of a job well done."

In that moment, I realized that I had gotten everything out of my summer that I needed. I also learned that, in doing a job well, I won’t always do that job the way others want it to be done. Half of this comes from communication, which I now strive to establish between myself and the people I work with. The other half of that is accepting that giving my all to a task will not always mean praise.

In every stage of my medical education, I know that I will have to work hard solely for my own benefit, and will sometimes disagree with others on how best to diagnose or treat a patient. Even though this experience was hardly life or death, it taught me to accept criticism from employers and colleagues, and to adapt to that criticism when needed, but to continue to give my all regardless.

The most meaningful achievements are often non-academic in nature. Describe the personal accomplishment that makes you most proud. Why is this important to you?

Until I was fourteen, I was what you might refer to as an “indoor kid.” I had no interest in exercise, decrying the concept of gym class as school-approved torture. All of that changed when, in ninth grade, I decided to learn to run.

I say “learn to run” because that was what it was—awkward and gangly as a newborn deer, I sweated my way through a miserable twenty minutes in the Mississippi humidity. It was awful. I remember lying on my kitchen floor as my marathoner mother cooked, the tile cooling my baking skin, wondering how on Earth anyone found this enjoyable. She laughed.

“Sometimes the best things in life are the ones that suck the most at the start, kiddo.”

Now, with four full marathons and seven halfs behind me, I realize how right she was. There is nothing in my life that inspires the same clarity as running.

There is also no activity or endeavor in my life so self-motivated as long-distance running. It has always been a solitary, meditative sport for me. Nobody is telling me to set those 5:30am alarms but me (or to snooze them). When I sign up to run races, I know that I am the only person who will make sure I've stuck to my training schedule.

In search of new motivation, or just in search of a purpose, I decided to turn my marathon training into an act of service during my junior year when I signed up to run the Nashville Rock 'n Roll Marathon as a St. Jude Hero. This added a fundraising goal of $500 for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. At first, the goal was an added perk to the already-tangible joy of crossing the finish line of my fourth marathon. However, as the spring semester went on and my life got busier, that goal became the added push I needed to wake with the sun, go to sleep at 9pm every Friday, keep the rest of my life in order so that I was never interrupted when I needed to run.

In the end, I raised double my fundraising goal. I’ve now set my sights on the Mississippi Blues Marathon in January 2018 and raising money for the Jackson Women's Health Organization, the only remaining abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi.

In talking to my friends who are also pursuing medicine, there seems to be a preconception that we'll all do great things…when we get our M.D.s . Until then, it's all about keeping our heads down. While I look forward every day to the good I'll be able to do as a physician, I am also grateful for the opportunity to do good without any degrees at all, and with nobody telling me to do good but myself.