Bennington Postbac Premed Program
Postbac in the Spotlight
Jordan is this week's Postbac in the Spotlight. Jordan answers questions from fellow postbac student Shelby here about his path to an MD and his postbac year at Bennington:
What made you want to become a doctor?
“When I was about sixteen I went to a boarding school called “High Mountain Institute” that had students spend half-months outdoors in Utah’s Dark Canyon, the Mosquito Mountains in Colorado and the deserts of Arizona. In order to prepare students for the unexpected while backpacking we were offered the opportunity to receive Wilderness First Aid and, later, Wilderness First Response training. I must have been a little bit of a jinx, because out of the three excursions I went on my group had emergencies twice! It was during these hairy situations that I got to apply what I had learned, and I found that I reacted well under pressure. After returning home, I became an EMT and I really enjoyed it. This experience and my passion for learning made me consider medicine as the next step in my academic career.”
What are you most excited about for when you become a doctor?
“Using a specialized education to achieve a specific, tangible, social good. I have a very open mind concerning where in medicine I will land, so it’s hard for me to be more specific than that. But in general, I like that medicine is a mix of immediately practical, and academic pursuits.”
What do you do in your spare time?
“When I do have spare time I play lots of music. I’ve had a passion for blues and jazz since I was about fifteen, and during the last year of completing my undergraduate degree I supported myself by teaching guitar and playing small gigs.
“I also have a dog. When the weather permits I like to take him on campus to run around or take walks. Other than that I read a fair amount; I am finishing Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” right now and looking for a good book on chess tactics.”
What is your favorite science word?
“I’m going to cheat and use a phrase: ‘hydrogen bonding’.
It’s the answer to everything in chemistry and biology.”
Why did you choose Bennington?
“I completed my undergraduate education at St. John's College in Annapolis, a school that exclusively follows a ‘Great Books’ curriculum. For this reason I had never taken a ‘proper’ exam, or worked out of a textbook, or even really attended a lecture. The unique program at Bennington seemed to me a way to bridge the gap between my undergraduate training and the skills I will need in medical school. The professors are very involved in the curriculum, they encourage meeting for office hours, and they give ample amounts of feedback. This is the type of direction I needed while I developed study habits earlier this year. The first two terms for me were like being a freshman in college all over again.”
What has been your favorite moment at Bennington so far?
“So there was a lab in Chemistry 2—anyone who took the class will remember it because I absolutely made the whole laboratory smell like compost. Our professor, Janet Foley, had allowed us to design our own elimination/substitution reaction, and I had worked very hard to design what I thought was a very original and plausible procedure. When I showed it to Janet she wasn’t sure it would work, but encouraged me to try anyway. The procedure relied on introducing heat to a solution and then collecting one of many possible products because that product would evaporate as the solution boiled. Luckily, I ended up with something that was definitely different than what I started with, but that product didn’t have the structure I expected. I kept the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer) results in my apartment because I’ve never solved what the compound was.”
Postbac in the Spotlight
Jordan is this week's Postbac in the Spotlight. Jordan answers questions from fellow postbac student Shelby here about his path to an MD and his postbac year at Bennington:
What made you want to become a doctor?
“When I was about sixteen I went to a boarding school called “High Mountain Institute” that had students spend half-months outdoors in Utah’s Dark Canyon, the Mosquito Mountains in Colorado and the deserts of Arizona. In order to prepare students for the unexpected while backpacking we were offered the opportunity to receive Wilderness First Aid and, later, Wilderness First Response training. I must have been a little bit of a jinx, because out of the three excursions I went on my group had emergencies twice! It was during these hairy situations that I got to apply what I had learned, and I found that I reacted well under pressure. After returning home, I became an EMT and I really enjoyed it. This experience and my passion for learning made me consider medicine as the next step in my academic career.”
What are you most excited about for when you become a doctor?
“Using a specialized education to achieve a specific, tangible, social good. I have a very open mind concerning where in medicine I will land, so it’s hard for me to be more specific than that. But in general, I like that medicine is a mix of immediately practical, and academic pursuits.”
What do you do in your spare time?
“When I do have spare time I play lots of music. I’ve had a passion for blues and jazz since I was about fifteen, and during the last year of completing my undergraduate degree I supported myself by teaching guitar and playing small gigs.
“I also have a dog. When the weather permits I like to take him on campus to run around or take walks. Other than that I read a fair amount; I am finishing Neil Gaiman’s “American Gods” right now and looking for a good book on chess tactics.”
What is your favorite science word?
“I’m going to cheat and use a phrase: ‘hydrogen bonding’.
It’s the answer to everything in chemistry and biology.”
Why did you choose Bennington?
“I completed my undergraduate education at St. John's College in Annapolis, a school that exclusively follows a ‘Great Books’ curriculum. For this reason I had never taken a ‘proper’ exam, or worked out of a textbook, or even really attended a lecture. The unique program at Bennington seemed to me a way to bridge the gap between my undergraduate training and the skills I will need in medical school. The professors are very involved in the curriculum, they encourage meeting for office hours, and they give ample amounts of feedback. This is the type of direction I needed while I developed study habits earlier this year. The first two terms for me were like being a freshman in college all over again.”
What has been your favorite moment at Bennington so far?
“So there was a lab in Chemistry 2—anyone who took the class will remember it because I absolutely made the whole laboratory smell like compost. Our professor, Janet Foley, had allowed us to design our own elimination/substitution reaction, and I had worked very hard to design what I thought was a very original and plausible procedure. When I showed it to Janet she wasn’t sure it would work, but encouraged me to try anyway. The procedure relied on introducing heat to a solution and then collecting one of many possible products because that product would evaporate as the solution boiled. Luckily, I ended up with something that was definitely different than what I started with, but that product didn’t have the structure I expected. I kept the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer) results in my apartment because I’ve never solved what the compound was.”