Spring Highlights

Happy Summer!!!!! This spring I was pretty lucky to have a few adventures in between the whirlwind of a pretty tough semester.

AMWA 103rd Annual Meeting:

Late March I attended the 103rd Annual Meeting of American Medical Women’s Association. This year’s meeting was in Philadelphia.

Honestly, I can’t believe that I have never been to Philadelphia before when it is so close. I have always wanted to go, (mostly because I was a history nerd growing up and wanted to see the Liberty Bell :)). But despite my many trips to various parts of Pennsylvania, I never went. Now that I have been, though, I’m already planning to go back. Since I was helping out with the conference a lot more this year, I didn’t get to explore as much as I wanted to.

On one of the lighter conference days we took a trip to the Mütter Museum. The Mütter Museum is a medical history museum with impressive archive of cases and exhibits dating back 150 years. Due to HIPAA Law, visitors are not supposed to take pictures inside. Many of the exhibits contain specimen from people with living family.  out of respect for the people who donated their bodies or cases to the museum. I highly suggest visiting! No matter what you are interested in you are bound to find something cool. There was an exhibit relating real life cases to fairy tales and one on the medical care and discoveries during the Civil War.

This year’s meeting was my the third I was able to attend since joining AMWA. Still, every year I am amazed by how much I learn more and the amazing people I meet. These are the reasons I love attending each year. Of course, I also love to visit a new city even if it is just for a little while. Listening to the stories and experiences of the speakers who came from many different backgrounds, expertise, and schools of thought gave me a new perspective on how I thought about medicine and how it is applied to our lives. I also learned a great deal about career development, finding balance and taking care of myself, and many possibilities and opportunities I may encounter in the future.

Science Day:

Over the past year I have been working in a research lab at my school. I had the opportunity to present my research at the end of the year at an event our school hosts for all students from high school to graduate. It was a pretty great experience getting to present and discuss my research with others from different backgrounds and levels of education. I was pretty nervous at the beginning – I’m not typically a fan of presentations and usually don’t have to give individual ones in my science courses – but the nerves quickly went away and I ended up having a lot of fun. Working in my lab over the past year has really taken me out of my comfort zone a number of times but I really cannot complain. These experiences have pushed me and taught me things about myself. After we went out to a Turkish restaurant as a lab and we had a great time.

Graduation:

Ok, here’s the big one! I officially graduated from college this month!!!! I received a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Women in Gender Studies. To be honest it feels pretty surreal. Undergrad was a very, very long and tough road … and now that it’s over I feel like it flew by. And as my cap says I’m ready to start a this new adventure post grad!

P.S. This quote is from one of my all time favorites: The Lord of the Rings. To me it fit swimmingly!

BookCon 2018: 

Right after graduation I was able to attend BookCon, a convention for book lovers, with one of my good friends. Authors, publishers, readers, and more come together to essentially talk about books. There were panels and exhibits on various topic in literature, culture, and writing advice. But BookCon is also pretty popular because you get to meet authors and gets books that are either free, discounted, or some that are not even published yet (aka Advanced Reader Copies or ARCs).

I think I got a pretty good amount of books for my first time. I’m especially excited to read Sing, Unburied, Sing; An Enchantment of Ravens; Furyborn, Kindred (I own a copy, but this is a graphic novel adaptation), and of course A Dictionary of Tolkien. It is a comprehensive dictionary of all things from the world of Tolkien. You may have noticed from my graduation cap that I LOVE The Lord of the Rings so when I say that my eyes bulged when I saw that book I mean it. I really can’t wait to go back next year!!!!

– Tatyana xo

What was great about your spring? What are you looking forward to this summer? Or this year?