Q. What aspects of your MCB degree program best helped you prepare for your career?
A. The rigor of Berkeley's MCB pathway definitely played a major role in helping my career in medical school. What's important to realize is that the majority of the information you learn in lectures can technically be found online in some variation. So make the most of your time at Berkeley by finding any and all opportunities to connect with your professors, specifically with the ones who share even a sliver of commonality with you or your career path. I still keep in touch with several of my former professors, many of whom wrote me letters of recs for med school. One last aspect of the MCB program that's helped me with my research is how professors allude to research and the relevance of the material in their lectures. It's nice to be able to apply those specific topics and techniques you learned in lab into a broader setting, where you focus on 1-2 projects that actually help people in a bench-to-bedside manner.
Q. How did you decide on your current career path?
A. I knew I wanted to study medicine around high school, or just before then. The events in my life converged into this common understanding that medicine was just the right path for me. Growing up, my dad taught me a lot about cars; he'd consistently say to take care of your car and showed me different ways to do that. "If you want to figure out what's wrong, just listen". This wasn't unlike a physician listening to their patient's concerns to reach a diagnosis. From my mother's side, it was plenty of holistic eastern remedies. Instead of using ibuprofen, it was crushed clovers, etc. A healthy mix of both these worlds in my upbringing, combined with the side of my brain that likes engineering and putting things together, pointed me in the direction of surgery.
Q. Share your favorite Berkeley lunch place, coffee shop, landmark study spot...etc.
A. Strada (social studying), mainstacks (hard studying), and Berkeley Way West (relaxed studying)