I am looking forward to participating in a live twitter dialogue on professional identity formation hosted by the Harvard Macy Institute on Wednesday June 7th at 9PM along with two of my medical school peers at Florida Atlantic University. If you’re on twitter you can use the hashtag #HMIchat to follow along or ask questions of us in real time.

It will be hosted by Dr’s Hedy Wald and Elizabeth Gundersen of Brown and FAU with support from faculty at the Mayo clinic as well as the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. Needless to say it’s a huge honor to be included.
If you don’t know about my non-traditional journey to the medical profession I will disclose a shortened version here. I got the phone call offering me a spot at Florida Atlantic University while driving to Michigan to work as official press for the Detroit Electronic Music Festival. I would spend three days photographing and interviewing artists, attending after-parties and publishing my adventures. This was just another weekend for me. I was working as a DJ and PR professional in NYC for the years leading up to medical school and there was not really a transition period for me. The record kind of just got ripped off the turntable while it was still spinning.
There were a lot of reasons I wanted out. Mostly I had taken on a new lifestyle; meditation, yoga, vegetarianism, and this didn’t sync well with the nightlife circuit. People I was djing for wanted to get drunk. They wanted to party and they wanted to take advantage of one another. I felt like I was encouraging people to harm themselves and even though the nightclubs in NYC are generally non-smoking the environment wasn’t conducive to health. I got into medicine because I thought I would find a community of individuals dedicated to wellness – who would be an example to their patients and not just lecture them about primary prevention and health practices.
I wanted a profession where I could feel like I was healing and I found that. I found incredible mentors who council patients and go out of their way to do the right thing. There is a pharmacist I worked with who legally adopts his patients when they don’t have an alternative to living on the streets. There’s a doctor specializing in memory loss who I spent many afternoons with who cares as much for the family members of her patients as she does for the people she’s officially tasked with providing for. I found mentors worthy of emulating and I found out I didn’t totally have to give up my music. I still DJ our medical school yearly awards party for fun, I just haven’t been doing as many weddings or corporate gigs down here. And I still love to listen to music and collect records – maybe I even enjoy the music more now that I don’t have to think about whether or not it can work on a dance floor.
The process of professional development for me became an integration rather than an abandonment. I recognize that I learned from my experiences and I hope I will have something to offer because of them.
Coming soon- the 10 ways being a (moderately) successful club DJ in New York prepared me for medical school…