My Story
My initial life plan was to get my Master’s in both Occupational Therapy and Neuroscience, so that I could do proper researh on Sensory Integration Dysfunction, something sorely lacking in the field. I started out in the University at Buffalo’s Occupational Therapy BS/MS program. I very quickly realized that there was no way for me to finish this program and respect myself as an intelligent individual, but decided to hold out until our required Gross Anatomy summer session. Two and a half years and some underwater basketweaving later (how I wish I were kidding about the basketweaving), I decided to get out of Dodge. But those six weeks of Gross Anatomy stuck with me. During this time I fell in love with the scalpel and the human body. A cadavermate mentioned I should go into surgery. I laughed it off: for the entirety of high school I kept saying I would never go into medicine. Hovering over the cadaver, however, I started thinking that perhaps he was onto something.
I began viewing lab the way I viewed my art; the scalpel felt as natural in my hands as a pencil or a piece of charcoal. The body was my canvas. I gave OT one more semester to “come through” for me, and to start looking into what changing majors would entail. Needless to say, OT only got worse. In the middle of my Junior year, I left Buffalo to take time off and volunteer with Magen David Adom in Upper Nazereth, Israel. Although mostly I dealt with drunk Russians, and a few out of control Christian Arabs, this was an incredible experience, and only further affirmed my desire to become a surgeon.
I’ve now made Aliyah (moved to Israel), and have started the (seemingly insurmountable) journey of getting accepted into Medical school. In the meantime I’m reading all the medical blogs I can get my cyber-hands on, living vicariously through incredible people who are doing what I want to be doing.