I had just graduated from Harvard College, and didn’t know what I’d like to do in the future. I had a B.A. in Biology, and I kept “hearing” I’d have a hell of a hard time getting into medical school. My grades weren’t so great, and I knew I had trouble keeping up with my hearing classmates. Unlike me, they all could hear almost all of what our professors were teaching in the science classes crucial for medical school entrance (biology, chemistry, physics, calculus). Oftentimes, I’d not do as well as they did. I had notes and I had textbooks, but they could not be the same as what my classmates learned, especially because our professors had their own experiences and knowledge that they could verbally pass onto their students but not onto me. Even an oral interpreter could not help me much in one course, Cell Biology – there were too many technical terms that were beyond my lipreading ability, much less comprehension. As a result, I received the lowest grade in any course I took at Harvard – a D!
As for ‘notes,’ I didn’t write them in the class—I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t pay attention to the professor AND take notes during the class. Even, it’s beyond impossible for any fellow classmates (especially those who took the notes for me or let me copy their notes) to write all being said in class. They, however, had a big advantage over me – they could hear everything.
The summer before my senior year, I studied abroad at the West Indies Laboratory in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, for five weeks. There, I loved the course in Ecology of Coral Reefs. I learned SCUBA diving and studied fish habitancy and behavior around the reefs. I thought marine biology would be both an adventure and a career for me, partially because SCUBA and fishes did not require much communication, yet they were fun things to do. However, I didn’t do well in Biological Oceanography, my last biology course at Harvard. This distracted my focus on marine biology.
After my graduation, Dr. Daniel Albert got me a job as a research technician at his laboratory at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI) in Boston. For the next two years, I gained laboratory experience and skills, which I thought would help my applications into medical schools AND graduate schools in both marine biology and pathology. I mentioned the former because of my visit at the West Indies Laboratory, and I mentioned the latter, because Dr. Albert was basically a pathologist interested in cancers of the eye such as ocular melanoma and retinoblastoma.
I applied to 32 medical schools, four of which invited me for interviews and two of which waitlisted me. Eventually, one of them rejected my application because my interviewer erred in thinking that I only wanted to work with deaf patients1, while the other still has not yet resolved the application status after more than 30 years!
As for graduate schools, I applied to eight graduate schools in marine biology and eight graduate schools in pathology. Only one of the graduate schools in marine biology (Duke University) and at least three of the graduate schools in pathology (including Dr. Albert’s medical alma mater, University of Pennsylvania) had admitted me. Prior to my admittance, the pathology, but not the marine biology, schools invited me for interviews. When I was admitted to the aforementioned schools, I received offers for fellowships (including a monthly stipend and free tuition) at all the pathology schools, but not at Duke.
However, following my admittance, Duke invited me to come visit there, including its own Marine Laboratory. I met several faculty members in Marine Oceanography and discussed my experience at the West Indies Laboratory. They finally offered me a fellowship. As for UPenn, it had a Biomedical Graduate program that allowed its incoming graduate students to explore different fields in basic sciences such as neuroscience before declaring one’s own Ph.D. major. One laboratory in the program got my attention, because the laboratory of Dr. James C. Saunders focused on the effects of acoustic overexposure on avian hearing. The effects were
reversible, meaning the acoustically injured bird could regain most, if not all, of its lost hearing and could also repair its damaged ears, including replacement of lost auditory hair cells with new ones.
So if you were deaf, you were very interested in biology, and you were also interested in how you could have lost your hearing as well as how you could possibly regain your hearing, what would you have to decide? Duke’s last-minute fellowship offer had complicated my decision, but at the end, the choice was obvious.
Once at UPenn, I re-took Cell Biology and got a B.
References
I am glad you got into a program that suited you.
Thank you, John.