Introduction to Brandi

These are my kids: Mazie, 9 and Vivian, 7. Mazie is the one dressed as a garnet (that was for school). I am a wife and a mother of two...and a med student as well. When Allison told me she was starting this blog, I told her that I wished we'd done something like this right off the bat. On reflection, though, I don't know if I would have been ready to share. It has taken me a full three years to get my sea-legs, and I still can't say for certain I have sea-legs at all. There are several things I do know: One, I am incredibly grateful to be where I am now. I love taking care of patients, and I love learning to practice medicine. I feel engaged with my work as I rarely have before. Two, my kids are fine without my constant attention. It turns out that they need periodic attention from me, but that they thrive under a variety of circumstances and caretakers (my husband primary among them). Three, this is a team effort. We are Team Gunn, and my husband is my partner in all I do. Without him, none of this would have been possible. This isn't just lip-service; he is the backbone. Four, I am in a wonderful learning environment. I have learned to become a professional by watching professionals. The value of a place is not its name but its people. Emory people are, on the whole, dedicated to excellence, to patient care, to teaching, to service, and to leadership. My eyes used to glaze over when reading a sentence like that one, and maybe yours just did because it is strangely reminiscent of a commercial. But I have to tell you that every quality I listed has at least three specific experiences behind it to back it up...and that is part of what I want to write about in this forum. I am interested in what makes a culture. It's people in aggregate, but what leads the culture comes from a smaller subset, I think. I am excited to explore all this and more, and especially excited about hearing from the rest of the contributors. Til then, keep it human.

Introducing Allison...

Hi,

My name is Allison and I'm a mom as well as a fourth year medical student. I have two boys - Will and Henry, 3.5 yo and 1.5 yo respectively.  Will was born when we lived up in Boston and came on the scene before medical school. Henry arrived between second and third year of school. (In fact my anatomy partner and I were pregnant together at the same time! How fun! Hopefully she'll write in later). My husband is Ian - he's a software engineer working for a small start-up in the Atlanta area. As much as I love working with people, he loves working with computers - although he can communicate with the human-kind just fine. 

I've decided to apply to a residency in pediatrics - I'm excited! Who wouldn't be excited to work with runny-nosed germ machines, I mean really? But seriously, I do like kids (good thing since Will and Henry are showing no signs of being ready to move out any time soon) and I really like families - so I think pediatrics will be a good fit. Also, kids keep it real - and I like that too. 

Currently I'm in the throws of personal statement agony. I will not bore you with the details, that's for the residency committees, but man, writing is tough. I know I'm not a natural born writer/blogger - there will be a learning curve with these posts, so bear with me. 

I'll keep it short for post one - gotta build up some suspense so you'll want to find out more ;) Looking forward to it,

-A

My three boys.

Let's get it started

Several months ago I had the idea to begin a group blog. You see, I am a fourth year medical student, and that means in one short year I (and my classmates) will be heading off to residency. We will scatter to different cities, different states, different continents to continue our journeys as doctors. We are choosing different specialties - surgery, pediatrics, internal medicine, research, etc. Some are taking a year off to raise families or pursue additional degrees or uncover new medical knowledge.

So, you see, there will be lots of different experiences, different challenges, different celebrations along the way, and I thought a group blog would be a great way to capture those moments and stay connected. I know we still have at least one more year in school - but it will largely be a year of individual paths and discoveries as opposed to our previous years of class lectures and shared rotations. So starting to write now might help us get in the habit and help us reflect on the changes to come.

Everyone will do an initial post as a means of introducing him/herself, and then we'll see where the blog takes us.

Happy writing!
-Allison