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.
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| 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
Mel Walsh was awarded the Sarah Gingrich Firebaugh Memorial Scholarship!
