By: Heather Wachtel, MD Growing up in Vermont, I had one person who looked like me – my sister. The children of a first generation Cantonese immigrant and a second generation Russian Jew, we loved...
By Dr. Chantal Reyna How well would you handle not being able to perform surgery anymore? The real question is “How much of your identity is based on being a surgeon?” We tend to define ourselves...
By Alyssa Reese In life and in medicine, we are often pulled by intangible forces to the next steps in our path. We go forward with uncertainty, yet we look back into the past to see that everythi...
By: Elizabeth Perazza Back to 2009 after 8 years of experience as a Board-Certified Urologic Surgeon, I was told by a supervisor that I was not contributing to the training program. This supervisor...
By Kyla Wright “So, tell me – why general surgery?” My mouth begins reciting a premeditated answer before my mind has time to catch up. We are only a few weeks into interview season and, alread...
By Sara Ashai There are days where everything goes wrong, but there are also days where everything goes right. Most days, we sit somewhere in the middle. Our voice stays quiet some days, some days it...
By Alyssa Brown In 2019, I stood by and watched as my friends and classmates matched. It was the spring of my first year in the PhD program. I had made the flight down to watch them match. It was a b...
By Ariana Naaseh, MD I was one of the medical students who always swore there was absolutely no way I’d become a surgeon. I’d heard too many stories about surgeon personalities and the terrible a...
By Megan Jenkins Turner, DO Growing up, my dad always told me “endeavor to persevere.” I can honestly say I had no idea what that meant until recently. Particularly when I found myself unmatched ...
By Meredith Taylor, MD One of the most difficult aspects of surgical training is taking critical feedback, synthesizing it, improving from it, and—most importantly—not taking it personally. In my...
