med sisters series: Kat, premed

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The Med Sisters Series is a series of interviews of women in various stages of their careers in medicine: pre-med, medical school, residency, fellowship and attending physicians. As women, I believe we face unique challenges within any field, medicine included. As I’ve moved along on this journey, I truly believe one of the biggest support systems we have is each other. Society works so hard to pit women against each other in every situation you can think of but, as feminists, I think it’s so important to combat that urge to try to ‘beat each other out.’ There’s room for all of us on the other side of the glass ceiling. The goal of this series is to shed light on the challenges women face in the field of medicine and how they achieve a work-life balance that works for them. This blog has always been a place for me to share the realities of this journey, both the highs and lows. I thought of this series as a way to share the perspectives of the other extraordinary women on this journey too.

Katherine is a premedical student who is interested in pursuing a career in surgery. You can follow her journey on her Instagram and her blog.

Kat

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kohl’s adoption story

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If you follow me on Instagram, you already know this but we recently adopted a kitten! I thought I would share a bit about how we got him and how it’s been as a first time pet owner.

We adopted Kohl from a local rescue group about three weeks ago and he’s quickly moved his way into our hearts. He’s currently roaming around the room as I type this, playing hide and seek with himself, and I can’t imagine our home without him. While we were doing research, we saw that black animals (both cats and dogs) had lower adoption rates due to superstitions and stigma associated with them, which completely broke our hearts. How ridiculous is it that humans are even racist against certain animals!?

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med sisters series: Joyce, MD

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The Med Sisters Series is a series of interviews of women in various stages of their careers in medicine: pre-med, medical school, residency, fellowship and attending physicians. As women, I believe we face unique challenges within any field, medicine included. As I’ve moved along on this journey, I truly believe one of the biggest support systems we have is each other. Society works so hard to pit women against each other in every situation you can think of but, as feminists, I think it’s so important to combat that urge to try to ‘beat each other out.’ There’s room for all of us on the other side of the glass ceiling. The goal of this series is to shed light on the challenges women face in the field of medicine and how they achieve a work-life balance that works for them. This blog has always been a place for me to share the realities of this journey, both the highs and lows. I thought of this series as a way to share the perspectives of the other extraordinary women on this journey too.

Joyce is a dermatology resident at New York University and you can follow her journey at her blog, Tea with MD, and her Instagram.

Joyce

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reflection: prison education project

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During my first year in medical school, I picked up The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander in an effort to get a better understanding about the prison system in the United States. While I had heard about the astronomically high rates of incarceration, I wanted to understand why things were the way they were. In the first chapter ‘The Rebirth of Caste,’ Alexander introduces the idea that the prison system is used as a legal and ‘politically correct’ means of slavery after emancipation of slaves. Under this system, law enforcement agencies are almost universally protected, regardless of their actions, and seemingly arbitrary (and often racist) mandatory minimum sentences exist for petty crimes. Throughout the text, Alexander also discussed the high recidivism rates within the prison system. She details many barriers that prevent inmates from reintegrating into society after returning to the free world including restricted access to employment and housing and severe parole policies.

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med sisters series: Ele, OMS2

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The Med Sisters Series is a series of interviews of women in various stages of their careers in medicine: pre-med, medical school, residency, fellowship and attending physicians. As women, I believe we face unique challenges within any field, medicine included. As I’ve moved along on this journey, I truly believe one of the biggest support systems we have is each other. Society works so hard to pit women against each other in every situation you can think of but, as feminists, I think it’s so important to combat that urge to try to ‘beat each other out.’ There’s room for all of us on the other side of the glass ceiling. The goal of this series is to shed light on the challenges women face in the field of medicine and how they achieve a work-life balance that works for them. This blog has always been a place for me to share the realities of this journey, both the highs and lows. I thought of this series as a way to share the perspectives of the other extraordinary women on this journey too.

Eleanora is a second year medical student in Philidelphia. You can follow along on her journey at her Instagram and blog.

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#sharkandrhymes

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All this time off from school has really got me slackin’ on my blogging game, probably because most of my days lacked structure and I kind of just went with it. Blogging is a creative outlet for me so I don’t like to set hard deadlines for myself because I don’t want this to stop being fun. That said, there should be quite a few posts coming through in the next few weeks with updates on what I’ve been up to and some things regarding school. For more regular updates, follow along on Instagram!

So this past weekend one of my best friends from college got married!! It was a hectic, fun, laugh-filled, celebratory weekend. South Asian weddings can have a lot of different parts so I thought it would be cool to break down the events and share a bit about my culture!

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arizona adventures

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Last week, hubs and I took a trip to Arizona for our winter vacation. We try to take a short trip every time we both get some time off at the same time, since that so rarely happens. We’re both pretty much homebodies so it’s nice to take a few days away to get our fill of adventuring.

We spent a night in Sedona, two nights in Page (where Antelope Canyon and Horseshoe Bend are) and two nights at the south end of the Grand Canyon. In hindsight, I wish we’d stayed two nights in Sedona and only one in Page because there wasn’t really much to do there.

Below I’ve included some info on where we stayed and a couple places we ate. And at the very bottom of this post, I added some of my photos from my ‘real camera.’

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med sisters series: Vania, D.O.

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The Med Sisters Series is a series of interviews of women in various stages of their careers in medicine: pre-med, medical school, residency, fellowship and attending physicians. As women, I believe we face unique challenges within any field, medicine included. As I’ve moved along on this journey, I truly believe one of the biggest support systems we have is each other. Society works so hard to pit women against each other in every situation you can think of but, as feminists, I think it’s so important to combat that urge to try to ‘beat each other out.’ There’s room for all of us on the other side of the glass ceiling. The goal of this series is to shed light on the challenges women face in the field of medicine and how they achieve a work-life balance that works for them. This blog has always been a place for me to share the realities of this journey, both the highs and lows. I thought of this series as a way to share the perspectives of the other extraordinary women on this journey too.

 

Vania is a psychiatrist practicing in Southern California. You can follow her at her blog Freud and Fashion and her Instagram.

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my heart is in peshawar

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peshawar

Exactly one year ago was what some consider the darkest day in Pakistan’s history. Over one hundred children were killed at a school in Peshawar. Mothers and fathers sent their children to school, only to have them never return. Below I’ve included a piece that I wrote the evening of the attack last year. I read these words and still experience an almost debilitating sadness. I wish I knew what the ‘right’ thing to do was. I wish the world felt safer, better since this time last year – but it doesn’t. So I don’t know.

All I know is that I want to celebrate the lives of these children. I want to remember them for their quirks and know more about the life they led before it was cut too short. Dawn, one of the leading newspapers in Pakistan has created a wonderful tribute to all 144 lives that were lost that day, most of them children. Please spend some time today reading about them and say their names. Say their names so that they’re always part of this world and so that those who choose to terrorize innocent people know that we will never forget.

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show review: master of none, season one

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I recently did a post about Mindy Kaling’s book ‘Why Not Me?‘ and an episode of the show Quantico. I don’t often see South Asian people on screen who I can identify with, especially not characters who have real personalities and aren’t just the stereotypical cab drivers with accents. That’s not to say there aren’t real Pakistani and Indian taxi drivers who have recently immigrated to the United States in hopes of providing his/her family with a better life, because there most definitely are. But the problem comes about when the characters portrayed on screen are reduced to just their stereotypes. Because the cab drivers who helped my husband and I travel around Seattle and Portland last year had full lives with wives who lived abroad and theories about their competitors at Uber – they were more than their jobs and their accents.

Master of None is a show created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang that stars Ansari as the lead character of Dev, a 32-year old actor living in New York City. The show is absolutely hilarious because the dialogue totally strikes in my awkward life (Dev frequently ends conversations with ‘well this interaction is over now’).

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