Jenny Hsin & Lamario Williams (Editor’s Note: This article was published in the 2021 MSTP Newsletter as part of the May issue celebrating APAHM). May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month (APAHM)! This year, in the aftermath of the Atlanta Spa Shootings and the astonishing increase in anti-Asian hate crimes related to the COVID-19 pandemic,… Read More From the Vault: A Conversation with Dr. Victor Sung
Gary S., Brida K., Dean H., Zipperly M. IntroductionCheesecake is a delicious dessert consisting of a whipped cheese and cream filling, artfully layered onto a crust whose base may vary. Cheesecake is a versatile dessert, capable of being prepared sans-oven in moments of desperation or baked with aid of bain-marie for the most heavenly of… Read More Not exactly a piece of cake
By Shreya Kashyap, GS-3 The year of 2020 has left its indelible mark on research. I am immensely grateful for the distribution of multiple COVID-19 vaccines, thanks largely to a remarkable, global collaboration that started just three months after the virus was discovered. As of August 2020, just six months after the virus was discovered, there were… Read More The pandemic, the female academic, and the scientific reward system
By Lamario Williams, GS-2 As a first-year medical student busy with the Fundamentals of Medicine block in the Fall of 2017, I wanted to find a clinical volunteering opportunity. This was important to me because it helped me envision the “light” at the end of the proverbial tunnel. We had been learning how to take a patient’s… Read More Unique Pre-Clinical Opportunities: Spirit of Luke / A Promise to Help
By Alana Jones, GS-2 I’m serious. I haven’t seen my mentor (or any of my lab members) in-person since March 13. When you can do data analyses from anywhere, you’re not exactly at the top of the list on the campus re-entry plan. So, we’re all working remotely for the foreseeable future. And even though this… Read More Help, I haven’t seen my mentor in 6 months!
by Lamario Williams, GS-2 “Sick and tired of being sick and tired…” Fannie Lou Hamer famously echoed these words in 1964, but this colloquialism is a common way of expressing the impact of stress in African American Vernacular English. Prolonged stress can negatively impact health outcomes, but this topic is not widely discussed in the… Read More Stressed
Diversity and Inclusion. These “buzzwords” are often met with dismissal by some medical school applicants, but these principles should be embraced by anyone who wants to dedicate their lives to the service of others. We must promote diversity and work to eliminate the biases that perpetuate worse healthcare and outcomes for marginalized populations. We must… Read More Diversity & Inclusion: More Than Just Checking a Box
I’ve come to realize that the quality of my coffee predicts, with near perfect accuracy, the quality of my day. Being new to the Birmingham area, identifying where to get a quality cup was a priority for me. So, on a blustery during a blustery October week, fellow coffee enthusiast Ben Lin (MS-1) and I… Read More Seeds: A Birmingham Coffee Staple
Alana Jones, GS-1 One of the upsides (if there is one) of studying for Step 1 is that it forces you to get acquainted with new study spaces. I wished I could have been the kind of person who could sit on my sofa for 10 hours a day for 3 months, but I realized… Read More Studying: Location, Location, Location
If you ask our students, many of them will tell you that one of the best things about the UAB MSTP is its focus on families. And for many of us, that family includes some animal friends! We all recently found ourselves sharing pictures of our pets with each other, and we figured we would… Read More House Pets of the MSTP
UnABridged 