Choosing Where to Go to College

Deciding where to go to college was a bit of a struggle. As I mentioned, I went to a small high school. I graduated with about 65 people. After my experience with high school, I was looking forward to going somewhere bigger. I wanted a place that offered a wide range of experiences and some more diversity than where I grew up. I had a scholarship that would pay full tuition to any school in Indiana, so I really couldn’t pass that up. Indiana University was my target. I wanted to go to a large University.

My guidance counselor had a different opinion. The feeling was that I had done well in a small classroom setting, and I should continue that. I was told a horror story about another student who went to a larger university and didn’t succeed. The concern was that I’d never be able to achieve my dreams at a larger university because I would be a number, and I’d get lost in the crowd. My guidance counselor’s heart was in the right place. They wanted to see me be successful.

I visited a couple of smaller schools. It felt, to me, like I was visiting another high school. When I visited IU and spoke with one of their biology advisors, we attacked the concept that I couldn’t succeed in a larger university head-on. I received some excellent advice from that advisor. They recommended that I work to shrink the size of the University: go and talk with my professors, visit office hours, speak up in class, and ask questions. I was comforted by their advice and spoke with other students who had been successful.

Gotta do Work!

My parents expected me to go to college and fulfill the goals I had set for myself. They didn’t have the means to get me there, however. That was never a secret. If I wanted to go to college, I was going to have to work hard and get some scholarship monies or perhaps get a job or two that would help pay the bills.

I started working at the local swimming pool in the summers after I turned 15. My first job was in the concession stand, followed by office worker, lifeguard and finally the manager by the time I graduated high school. I worked there every summer. Lifeguarding was a rewarding way to spend the summers. It will probably be my favorite job forever. What other job can one do where they sit outside in the sun every day, only to hop in the pool when it gets a little too hot out? The job is serious, and bad things can happen, but lifeguarding and the preparation for the job, continuous practice, and learning are an excellent preamble to lifelong learning in medicine.

During the school year, around sports and other activities, I worked at a locally-owned movie store. This was another fantastic job that allowed me to work around my schedule and make money to support myself. Not to mention, I got the privilege of watching all of the latest movies on VHS and then DVD before others could. My job wasn’t to support the family, but it helped that I was able to support myself.

I continued working throughout college. I had jobs at the recreation center, teaching CPR, first aid, and lifeguard classes. I continued my summer work at the swimming pool until the summer after my second year of medical school. In addition, I was fortunate to earn some scholarship monies to help support my undergraduate education.

What are the benefits of work beyond money? I would say there are a lot. Medical school and residency admission committees look very favorably on students that have worked. Having a job teaches responsibility and work ethic. It teaches how to prioritize and manage time. In addition, it teaches people how to be employees and work well with others.

In some instances, having a job means managing others. This provides a whole other set of experiences that makes one an excellent medical student, resident/fellow, and eventual attending physician. The person who has had the responsibility of interviewing and choosing employees, organizing employees and scheduling them, and disciplining when necessary will be way ahead when it comes time to deal with the ins and outs of patient care and navigating the complex medical system.

Back to Indiana and High School

The summer before 6th grade, we moved from Kentucky to Edinburgh, Indiana. My dad took up a job helping our aunt and uncle run a Waffle House. My dad would eventually go on to work for Cummins, maker of Diesel engines, headquartered in Columbus, Indiana.

The remainder of my primary and secondary education occurred in the Edinburgh Community School District. Edinburgh is a small town of not quite 5,000. It’s most known for its outlet mall and Camp Atterbury, a national guard base that serves as a training center for troops headed into combat overseas.

Coming back to the story of my path to medicine, Edinburgh High School was a crucial stop along the way. One might think growing up in a small school district would be a disadvantage. I was lucky to say it was quite the opposite. I may not have had access to an AP course in every subject, but I had smart and dedicated teachers that were committed to education and success for all of their students.

I wasn’t the only student who had an interest in education in the sciences. We didn’t have a chemistry two or physics course, but our teachers created one for us. They made sure we had calculus to get our math up to par. The only goal was to ensure that we were adequately prepared to excel in our post-secondary education. I’m not sure there are many other schools in the country where you would find teachers who exhibit that sort of dedication to their students!

Perhaps the one thing that I was missing was an early education in standardized test-taking. I always did fine on state exams but didn’t have any teaching to the SAT or ACT – the first important multiple-choice exam required to gain entry into college. Not only are these exams important for entrance, but they can also be the quickest way to earn some much-needed merit monies to pay for a college education.

The most important preparation for standardized tests like the SAT, the ACT, or even board exams is to learn how to answer those specific test questions. My test scores were more than adequate to get into many schools. I got 1020 on the SAT (TWICE – with really no preparation other than the PSAT). Had I completed formal test prep, maybe I could have done better. I took the ACT and got a 32. The SAT score is nothing to write home about, and higher scores very likely could have gained me some more scholarship monies to help pay for college. I didn’t know that there were resources to prepare. I just assumed that the test was something like the state style tests. They are supposed to be tests of your knowledge, not necessarily tests of your test-taking skills. That is definitely only partially true.

If you’re reading this and working on the way to college, make sure you seek out a resource to help with test prep. If paying for prep is challenging, search the internet or talk with a guidance counselor to see what resources are available at a discounted rate or perhaps for free. Look for a resource that provides questions and do all the questions you can get your hands on. Give yourself time to take the test, fail, and then do it again.

Early Years – The Intro to Medicine

I was born in Bloomington, Indiana, and my family lived in Indiana until I was 7. We moved to rural Kentucky the summer before I started 2nd grade. We moved to a town called Avawam, Kentucky – in Perry County. Perry County is a small and impoverished county in southeast Kentucky. Coal mining is a big industry. My parents moved there to help family friends start a church.

We lived in a trailer when we first moved in, situated in the middle of a large field. We were lucky to have running water and central heat. Our neighbors across the creek drew their water from a well, heated their homes and cooked with coal and raised their animals and vegetables for food.

My dad worked with the pastor of the church, sewing tarps to cover coal trucks. It was enough money to provide basics, but we certainly weren’t rich, and there were plenty of times when we had to scrape by to make ends meet.

This part of the story is important because this is where I was first introduced to medicine – by way of a now-retired pediatrician named Dr. James Miller and his wife, Jane – who was a retired circulating nurse.

Dr. Jim (as everyone called him) was our pediatrician. He took care of my four younger siblings and me whenever we were sick or for general well-child stuff. I remember him coming to our home to take care of one of my brothers when he got pneumonia right after we moved to Kentucky.

After church services, Dr. Jim and Jane would often take a look at a sick kid or two, looking in ears or at tonsils and prescribing something to help kids get better. I made every attempt to hang around to see what Dr. Jim was doing and accompanied my siblings to office visits when I could. I found his knowledge and professionalism to be fascinating. I wanted to mimic him when I grew up.

I started telling everyone after meeting and observing Dr. Miller that I was going to be a pediatrician. While that didn’t exactly pan out, my dedication to medicine started there.

To this day, I owe my career in medicine to Dr. James Miller.

Introduction

My name is Ryan Harrison. I am an orthopaedic trauma surgeon at The Ohio State University.

I have been thinking a lot about writing recently. It is something I have always enjoyed doing, but don’t do enough of. Twitter has been a great experience so far, but I don’t think it goes far enough to allow for a complete sharing of ideas. I hope that this blog will do just that. I plan to use it as an expansion of Twitter involvement and to spark conversation and learning.

I plan to use this blog to write a series of cases or thoughts. For my first series, I want to write about my history and the choices I made during my education and training to get to today. I see a lot of talk about economics and wealth influencing the path to medicine and beyond. I did not grow up in a wealthy family, quite the opposite. I hope this story will encourage others who may be in a situation similar to my own to pursue their dreams and know that resources are out there.

Stay tuned!

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