Medical School: UT Southwestern
I grew up in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin called Stoughton. I was a tomboy as a kid, enjoying sports and gymnastics, and as a result spent my fair share of time in the emergency room. In fact, it was after having knee surgery in high school that I knew I wanted to pursue medicine.
At the age of 15, I moved to Houston, Texas and finished high school there. After graduating, I moved back to Wisconsin for college at the University of Wisconsin- Madison where I studied clinical laboratory science. During my four years there, I discovered the joy that is sailing. I even lived on a sailboat on Lake Michigan for a summer. (It was awesome!) Once college was over, I started working at a community hospital in the clinical laboratory/ blood bank. It was a great job with great people, but after six years suffering through Wisconsin winters, I was ready for the Texas heat. I worked for another two years in in the lab/ blood bank in Cypress, Texas (near Houston) before I decided I was ready for medical school.
I called Dallas, Texas home for four years while attending UT-Southwestern. Living in the heart of the big city was a definite change of pace, but classes and rotations kept me pretty busy. Nights and weekends were never dull in the ED, but I still managed to find some time to go sailing on Lake Ray Hubbard. While at UTSW, I made some lifelong friends and had some amazing experiences, but when it came to choosing a residency program, I knew I wanted a change of scenery.
What initially attracted me to Corpus Christi was the city itself. It has a great diversity of people like in the big city but still feels like a small town. The patients we see in our ED are the same way: they have an extensive variety of pathology equal to that of a larger city, but you might run into them at the grocery store or gas station the next day. I also like how we only have Emergency Medicine and Family Medicine residents. Without a surgery residency, EM residents get to run every trauma code. Because each class (EM and FP combined) is only 20 residents, we all get to know each other and work together, making admissions and consultations go more smoothly. And let's not forget the water! The wind here is great for sailing on most days, and I hope to get out on the water as much as possible during residency. A short drive to the Island will take you to the beach where there is fishing and decent surfing. I also have some friends who go kiteboarding and kayaking, which sounds like tons of fun. During the next three years here in Corpus, I am looking forward to taking advantage of all this city has to offer.