ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT (Below is the full Q&A for Anna from the 2021 SOAR Magazine Campus Greetings section.)Anna is in the Honors College at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). She is majoring in Philosophy and French and minoring in Chemistry and Creative Writing with a tentative graduation date of Spring 2023. Anna is also in the prestigious Early Medical School Acceptance Program (EMSAP) at UAB. Recent school involvement / impressive scholarships / favorite class / favorite interests in your downtime:Since coming to college, I have discovered and nurtured a passion for the humanities and the arts. I’ve explored this passion while working for Student Media and Aura Literary Arts Review, serving last year as the poetry editor and this year as the website coordinator and lead author. I enjoy writing as well, with my own poetry soon to be published in a literary magazine and one of my papers in neuroethics receiving recognition from the International Neuroethics Society. Though my interests in writing are varied, I have primarily focused my writing in narrative medicine, a form of writing meant to promote the betterment of patient treatment and physicians’ creativity and self-reflection by exploring testimonies of patient-physician interactions and the like. As narrative medicine rests at the intersection of my favorite studies— medicine, writing, and philosophy (ethics)— it comes as no shock that my research is heavily rooted in the narrative medical field. I research the ethical implications of weight discrimination in medicine with an emphasis on narrative medical accounts. Today, when healthcare professionals ask patients to put more trust in them than ever, it’s vital that discrimination is addressed and trust is once again fostered between physicians and patients. I feel confident that research such as this is a step in the right direction towards accomplishing this. I released the first EMSAP newsletter for current students and alumni in the spring of 2021. I also had an internship through the University of California at Irvine this past summer where I worked remotely with university faculty members to research specialized topics in ethics. Future plans:As a member of EMSAP, I still intend to attend medical school after graduation. I hope to become an OBGYN, and I’m interested in traveling to Africa in the future to treat women suffering from obstetric fistulas. No matter where I end up, I can’t see myself ever compromising my love for writing and the study of ethics and philosophy.Advice:My advice is to study what you want rather than what you think you “should” study, regardless of what you intend to do in your career. You may or may not end up where you expected, but you’ll enjoy the journey there so much more.Keep up the great work, Anna. We are all so very proud of you!
