Throwback Thursday: Jonathan Roberts

Jonathan Roberts, Nixon & Vanderhye P.C.

We recently caught up with alumnus Jonathan Roberts at a Banneker/Key Alumni event. He was a member of Team Universal Playgrounds in the Class of 2003, and is now a patent attorney at Nixon & Vanderhye. He was gracious enough to answer some of our questions, so follow the jump for more!

#TBT: Jaishri Shankar: A Love Letter for All Things Gems

Hey there, Gemstone! Most of you probably don't know me, but my name is Jaishri. I graduated from UMD and Gemstone (Team SWAMP) in 2013 and promptly moved to South Carolina to join Teach for America. I'm now in my second year as a TFA corps member, and I teach 8th grade Science to a very energetic and dynamic group of young men and women in Kingstree, South Carolina. I'm placed a very rural area at the local middle school, and everyone in town knows me as the crazy 8th grade Science teacher who loves turtles just a little too much...wonder why...? ;)

Guest Alumni Post: Jessica Lu

Class of 2014 - Team MEGA

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (MS1)

"Gemstone is a four-year, interdisciplinary team research program where students develop and conduct their own project aiming to address a broader societal issue." 

After four years of talking about Gemstone to freshmen in GEMS100, prospective students, and inquisitive family/friends, those words start to tumble out instinctively. When I was interviewing at medical schools, every single interviewer wanted to learn more about Gemstone. I don't know whether it was the elegant name, or they just had no idea what aquaponics meant and why I decided to work with fish for so many years... but by the end of interview season, I had my elevator pitch down to stand-up routine perfection. However, I did notice that every interviewer focused on a single word in my well-rehearsed spiel: the word "team". They had seen research before, but seldom team research, which encompasses its own unique assets and challenges. That intrigued them. 

A Look Back at Gemstone: An Alumna Perspective

Now in her first year of medical school, Anastasiya Latushko looks back at her time at Maryland in the Gemstone Program: 

When I first started college, I wasn’t sure that Gemstone was for me. I was never really interested in research so signing myself up for four years of it seemed scary but ultimately, I decided to do it because of something a senior said during an accepted student’s panel I attended. She had been interviewing at medical schools and her interviewers were so impressed by the unique opportunity Gemstone offered undergrads, they spent the entire interview talking about it. I hate to say it but it was what sold me on Gemstone. Four years later, when I was applying to medical school 30-40% of my application consisted of Gemstone-related things. Whether I talked about the actual research Team RODENT did, the teamwork aspect of the program, or the leadership experience I gained both from being part of my team and also being a GEMS100 section leader I really did spend a big chunk of time at interviews talking about Gemstone.

Alumni Anastasiya and Alex at their White Coat Ceremony

I remember the sense of awe I experienced when I went to the Senior Thesis Conference as a freshman seeing everything the senior teams accomplished. It all seemed so daunting, I couldn’t imagine producing that quantity and quality of work. But somehow, after a lot of hard work and long hours, we did it. 

When I started at the University of Maryland School of Medicine three months ago, I had this same feeling of anxiety when professors started telling us everything we would have to accomplish before graduation. But just like in Gemstone, you have to take it one day at a time. Med school is as hard as everyone says it is. There’s a common analogy that people use to explain the amount of work you have: if college was drinking from a hose then med school is like drinking from a fire hydrant. So, even when you think your brain can’t possibly absorb another piece of information or you spend hours in the anatomy lab the week before an exam making sure you can identify the 12 cranial nerves and their locations, you just do it and move on to the next task. For me, it was always important to see the bigger picture, our end goal, when we were doing our research, even though it was easy to get caught up in the little details. That’s exactly how I feel about med school now. When I start to lose track of why I want to be a doctor because I’m frustrated about having to memorize some minute details of the Krebs cycle, I go and shadow a doctor to remind myself of what the end goal is, and that’s to be able to have an impact on someone’s life by helping them feel better.

Gemstone was a big part of my life in college and now that I’ve graduated, I feel like it’s still having an impact on me. It helped me get to medical school and now that I’m here, I still use what I learned during my four years in the program.

-Anastasiya Latushko: Class of 2013: Team RODENT