MIT, Medicine, and Success from Any School by Ahmed H. '12

In 2012 everything about life at MIT felt important: Course 9,⁠01 With the late <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Corkin">Suzanne Corkin</a> as my advisor, who led the research on the famous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison">HM</a> case, which is what spurred my interest in neuroscience in the first place. UROPs,⁠02 Trained rats to run left or right in response to different noises and then dissected their brains WMBR,⁠03 Program Director and host of Howling the Blues MIT-EMS,⁠04 Scheduling Officer and EMT Model UN,⁠05 Secretary-General of MITMUNC blogging.⁠06 In the rare and brief moments free from anxiety about posting slices of my life to the public It was all so monumental.

Thirteen years of hindsight have flattened the relief map of events in my memory. Only two incidents among countless all-nighters, events, and projects in four years in Cambridge (2008-2012) have any tangible bearing on my trajectory as I time travel at a rate of one second per second:

1. I met Sarah ’10, became friends, asked her out, proposed, got married, and the rest is history–we’ve been happily married, now with two dogs, for eleven years. The impact of meeting her is self-evident (that’s as romantic as this will get).

2. Vidya ’12 approached me after class to ask, “Did you see that LSU is taking out-of-state students?”

That one requires explanation.

We were deep in the medical school application cycle in the Fall of 2011. I applied to 27 schools but had only one interview. This was due to two factors: First, my middling GPA even in Course 9, after turning down the opportunity to “earn” inflated grades literally anywhere else. It felt like I was the only one of my cohort not making straight A’s, suggesting that it was possible (though perhaps not for me) to compete GPA-wise with applicants from Harvard and other less-rigorous schools⁠07 Not a joke. I earned a B in 5.12 with difficulty. The following semester in 5.13, I had a C on drop day so I disenrolled. Next semester, I got a 14 on the first exam and dropped again. Insanity something something different results, I cross-registered into the equivalent class at Harvard the following semester. I gave the same effort and got an A-. Sarah had the same idea. Our friendship blossomed as we bonded as lab partners. We're married now. I don't know what the moral of this story is. as an MIT pre-med. And second, my procrastination in submitting applications, which are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Despite being from New Orleans, I had not applied to LSU because they only accepted Louisiana residents–their strict definition of which I did not technically meet. LSU revised that policy mid-cycle and announced their intent to admit a handful of out-of-state students for the first time. Vidya, aware of my unprovable connection to the state and my struggles in the application season, shared the news that had somehow escaped my attention.

I applied that day, and received an interview invitation and ultimately my acceptance letter on Tuesday, February 21, 2012: Mardi Gras.

One medical school admission is exactly as good as 28. That offhand comment, which Vidya⁠08 Vidya is now an emergency medicine physician. says she doesn’t even remember, changed the course of my life.

Sarah and I moved, freshly affianced, to New Orleans. I took a brief detour to beautiful Maxwell AFB, Alabama to dedicate my career to the Air Force in exchange for tuition.

As for med school itself, I found it difficult even after surviving the Institute. There was a joke that maybe still exists at MIT: “Our tests are like, ‘The density of water is 1gm/cm³. Calculate the mass of the sun.'” Learning in medical school is the opposite of that. There is no room for independent thought. It’s all rote memorization. Every structure–nerve, artery, vein, bone, organ–and their embryologies, courses, features, functions, relations to surrounding structures, must be memorized. These answers cannot be intuited nor derived with a back-of-the-envelope calculation. In comparison, MIT’s “firehose” was an old man at a urinal.

But this too I survived. Along the way, I realized that Neurology isn’t for me because books are for nerds, and that I needed to work with my hands. My OBGYN rotation coincided with the realization that I loved surgery but hated General Surgery, and that OBGYNs also operate. It additionally coincided with my grandmother’s stage IV ovarian cancer diagnosis. Fate conspired to make me an OBGYN⁠09 If I had a nickel for every time a Course 9 MIT Admissions Blogger/WMBR DJ became an OBGYN, I’d have two nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened <a href="https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/author/keri/">twice</a>. —the specialty I was least likely to pursue as a pre-med—and eventually a gynecologic oncologist.

I completed OBGYN residency at Naval Medical Center Portsmouth in Virginia, 2016-2020. Then I took unaccompanied orders to RAF Lakenheath near Cambridge (the English one) for two years, where despite the pandemic Sarah and I traveled all over Europe⁠10 Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, Isle of Man, Ireland, Faroe Islands, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, Spain, Portugal, Slovenia, and Malta and generally had the Best Time. I returned to NMCP for two additional years, all the while waiting for the Air Force to offer a GYN oncology training position. As a very specialized field, slots aren’t offered every year. My time finally came when I was selected to begin fellowship in July 2024.

Which leads us to the present day, where I am a gynecologic oncology fellow⁠11 I will be 37 when my formal education is complete, more than twice my age when I started at MIT. Medicine is an exercise in delayed gratification. in Washington DC. I love asking questions to move an entire field forward. My main research project involves advanced-stage ovarian cancer (for you, Mama), to devise a blood test to determine which patients should have chemotherapy first then surgery, vs surgery then chemo. Without getting into the weeds, this decision is a longstanding dilemma in devising treatment plans for patients with ovarian cancer.

And then there’s the clinical side, which is my true passion. Painstakingly removing every remnant of cancer in a patient’s abdomen. Answering an obstetrician’s bat signal when they find an unexpected accreta,⁠12 When the placenta grows into and sometimes <em>through</em> the uterus, causing life-threatening hemorrhage in a matter of minutes at delivery (which is why it was once known as "morbidly adherent placenta"). The main treatment is an emergency hysterectomy. and despite entering the game already down 4 liters of blood, waving our wands and then three days later watching mom walk out of the hospital, baby in arms. Telling a patient that her post-chemo CT scan shows no evidence of disease. Telling a patient that her surveillance CT scan shows return of disease, but that new treatments provide hope. Telling a patient that her CT scan shows widespread worsening disease, and guiding her to a death with dignity, on her terms.

Revisiting the original musing: What was important about MIT? Moreover, what was exclusive to my experience at MIT, that still impacts my life today?

At risk of stumbling into a “friends we made along the way”-adjacent ending, if I went to another school there would be no Vidya looking over my shoulder. There would be no Sarah.

But many students get into medical school from University of Northeastern [Flyover State]-[Suburb] Campus or Harvard. Hell, they probably have an easier time of it with a higher GPA and class rank.⁠13 MIT's policy against class rankings is a blessing when you're earning 14s on o-chem tests.<br />

If I had not attended MIT, would I have gotten into medical school? Would I have found love, and also two Weimaraners?

Maybe. Almost certainly, even.

I’m glad I never had to find out.