afrenchie36

[afrenchie36]

Final Post!

Hey everyone! 

Lots of things happened over the past year, and I’m not sure where to start. I guess I could tell a little more about my current situation. I came back home in Bordeaux a little over three months ago as I couldn’t get a visa extension to stay in the US. Those are things that happen and you just need to make the better of it. I was supposed to work in Hershey, at Penn State’s Neurosurgery Department, for a year prior to starting medical school in fall 2020. This is disappointing in many ways but mostly because it feels like I let my mentors in Hershey down. I have been working with my parents at the restaurants, helping them out and doing my best to keep myself busy before the next step. Truth is, you can’t do much with a bachelor’s degree. 

Now that we got the depressing stuff out of the way, let’s talk about the fun things that happened to me over the past year! First of all, RAM became an official club and I led it as president. In only a year, the club grew to two hundred members, with half of them volunteering at three different RAM clinics in Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Additionally, we’ve been working very hard to set up the first RAM clinic in Pennsylvania, which will take place in June of 2020 in Susquehanna county! Finally, we’ve been working with state legislators to pass laws to increase access to healthcare in rural areas of the US, and though it has been slow this is an important component of our work. I’ve made incredible friends (and girlfriend) through this club and it still feels unreal how quickly things came together. 

RAM has actually helped me realize how much I enjoy public health. Then I wondered, how could I combine my interest in public health and my love for surgery? This question has led me to global surgery, a quickly growing field of global health as 5 billion people lack access to safe and affordable surgical care. Eager to learn more about the field, I participated in a global surgery competition at Harvard Med fall 2018. Following that competition, I tried to get more involved in global surgery research and was fortunate to join a research group that studies access to surgical care in Haiti. I have now been part of that group for a year and am currently leading a research project on the costs of surgical care at St Boniface Hospital, a tertiary care hospital situated in southern Haiti.

My work with RAM and in global surgery has actually helped me realize that going to medical school is not the right choice for me at the moment. As of now, I see myself as someone that uses research and policy to increase access to medical care worldwide. Hence, I decided this past summer that I would not apply to medical school and am now applying to PhD programs instead. The goal would be to earn a PhD in global or public health which will give me the knowledge of population health, epidemiology, biostatistics, health economics and policy to truly make an impact. Overall, Penn State and Schreyer was a truly amazing experience. I have made countless friends and mentors of a lifetime. I have travelled the world and engaged in a wide breadth of experiences. I have created and built things with my hands and my mind. For all of this, I am thankful. 

I’ll send separate posts with a few pictures since for some reason my pictures won’t load through this post :(

[afrenchie36]

One post per semester routine

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this many time in this blog but I am absolutely awful at writing blog posts consistently. The first thing I’d like to say is it’s already been 3 years now at Penn State and I could not be any happier about my choice. Again, I would not have made it this far without my advisor @myos34 who’s been there for me every step of the way, tho I still have a long way to go. Now’s time for a general update about myself, YAY!!

I spent this past summer doing research work for my honors thesis which focused on the creation of a statistical model for the prediction of prefrontal cortex electrophysiology using anxiety-related behaviors. In a nutshell, the goal is to gather lots of behavior and brain physiology data, put everything together, and look for patterns that would help us predict brain physiology without having to cut open a brain aka just using behavior. I received a few grants to do this work which helped a lot and I am currently on my way to finish my thesis by the end of this fall which will be one big project out of the way. It was also a lot of fun staying in State College with my bestfriends for the summer. 

In other news, my club Remote Area Medical (RAM) has now become an official organization and we are now in our first semester as an active club on campus. We had no less than 130 students come to our first meeting and we currently have upwards of 180 students on our listserv. The exec has been fantastic and we are doing our best not only to provide free medical care to underserved communities in the US but also increase access to medical experience to Penn State students through volunteering at RAM clinics. We have two clinic trips scheduled for this semester, one in Charleston, WV and another one in Gloucester, VA during which we hope to bring as many students as possible. In addition to that, we are also working with a few counties in Pennsylvania to bring the first RAM free clinic in PA which would be absolutely phenomenal and would enable thousands to get the medical care they need and deserve. I’ll keep you all updated on that, but if you want to learn more about what we do I advise you to go to our website at https://psuram.weebly.com/about-us.html

I still can’t believe how much we have progressed in the past year and I look forward to see what the students involved in RAM will accomplish once the exec team and I will leave Penn State. Here’s a few pics!! 

The next big thing I’d like to talk about was my big concern as to how I could merge my passion for surgery and the work I have been doing to increase access to medical care in underserved communities. This led me to an emerging field named global surgery which focuses on improving access to safe surgical care in low- and middle-income countries. As I had never been involved in global surgery and since time is running pretty quickly for me (sucks to be a senior) I decided to sign up for the first global surgery event I could attend which happened to be the Northeast Global Surgery Hackathon organized by Global Surgery Student Alliance at Harvard Med in Boston. This hackathon was designed in a way that surgeons would give us ideas about general problems they encounter in global surgery settings and we could also pitch our own problems that we wished to tackle. We were then given a few hours to form teams and then we had approximately 36 hours to come up with a tentative solution to a problem of our choice and pitch it to judges. I was fortunate enough to work with an amazingly diverse set of individuals on an issue that we are now trying to build a prototype for. I, unfortunately, cannot say much about it due intellectual property issues, but it is a novel diagnostic tool specifically targeting low- and middle-income countries. This was truly an amazing experience and I now understand what I want to do with a career in medicine, that is, breaking the inequalities in terms of access to healthcare and make sure everyone gets the care they deserve as human beings. Again, here’s a few pictures of the event! 

Finally, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of family. I wouldn’t be able to do all those things without the constant support of my family and friends. Living far away from my parents and brother can be tough at times, but I make sure to come back at least once a year, like I did this past summer:

Thank you all for reading my post, I hope to write another one following the RAM trip to West Virginia! 

[afrenchie36]

Update

Bonjour! 

Ca fait longtemps que je n’ai pas écris un billet et c’est dommage. Alors voici une petite update sur ma vie aux Etats-Unis.

Côté scolaire, j’ai officialisé mon double major en physics et political science! Sans surprise, ma selection de classes est donc très centrée sur la physique et les sciences politiques. Voici les cours que je suis:

- Philosophy of Law: Analytical Jurisprudence. Un cours enseigné à Yale Law School qui s’intéresse aux questions du genre: qu’est-ce que l’essence de la loi? où la loi trouve-t-elle sa légitimé? quelle doctrine d’interpretation constitutionnelle est la plus convaincante?

- European Intellectual History since Nietzsche. Un cours sur quelques uns des grands philosophes continentaux depuis le XIXème siècle (Hegel, Nietzsche, Marx, Sartre, Derrida, Foucault, etc.)

- Marx’s Das Kapital. Un “individual reading” (c’est-à-dire que ce n’est pas un cours “officiel” mais un cours que je me suis préparé avec un professeur pour approfondir un sujet qui ne fait pas l’objet d’un des cours déjà offert par l’université) sur le Capital de Marx mais aussi sur les écrits du jeune Marx.

- Astrophysics, Gravity and Cosmology. Un cours de physique sur les exoplanètes, la relativité générale et les trous noirs.

- Advanced Physics Lab. Un TP de physique avancé au cours duquel on ne fait que trois expériences mais qui est beaucoup plus approfondi. La semaine dernière, nous avons par exemple expérimentalement démontré que l’inégalité de Bell est fausse, après deux semaines d’expérimentation.

Côté extrascolaire, je suis toujours impliqué dans la International Students Organization (en tant que président), le Yale Party of the Left and Prisme LGBT+.

Côté professionnel, je commence à préparer mes dossiers pour les facs de droit, un processus qui est stressant mais peut-être moins que le processus d’admission aux undergraduate programs. En particulier, il ne me faut passer qu’un standardized test (le LSAT), mais il faut dire qu’il n’est pas facile.

[afrenchie36]

Remote Area Medical

More interesting is my new project. As I told you in my last post, I spent the summer in Hershey, PA doing research. During that summer I spent most of my time doing research, working for my online classes and working out. Dr.Gresso who has been my counselor for the past 6 years and has helped me integrate Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College frequently sends me emails about articles related to healthcare. One day that summer she emailed me a New York Times article about Remote Area Medical, an organization that sets up free clinics throughout the USA in order to offer healthcare to Americans that do not have access to care, whether it is for financial or geographical reasons. After reading that article, I talked about it with my roommate at the time who’s now my bestfriend at Penn State. I mentioned the idea of fundraising and use the money to travel to those clinics and work as volunteers. With a recently obtained EMT certification, I felt like volunteering at those clinics would be the perfect opportunity to get medical experience. As a very impulsive person, I did not think twice and decided to email one of the volunteer coordinator of RAM and ask the feasibility of bringing a dozen college students to one of those clinics. After a short month, I got a call from the volunteer coordinator while I was taking a week off in Texas following my internship. She explained to me how excited she was and that they had never been in touch with Penn State students before. What started off as a simple phone call was the beginning of an adventure. 

When I came back to school, the first thing I did was talk about the phone call to my bestfriend. It wasn’t until a month before the clinic that I realized how much work we had to do to get this going. One night, I emailed a few people from the honors college asking them what I would need to do to get funding and organize this through the honors college, which would be the most convenient for what I considered as our “prototype”. A few days later, I was working on applications to receive funding, my friend and I were meeting with a few people to try to sell our event, and we ended up getting the money we needed for this. However, we were running out of time and we had to sign up the students that volunteered to go, reserve a van, a hotel room close to the clinic which was set in West Virginia, and find a driver for our van. A week and a half before the clinic, my friend talked to me for a few minutes “Listen Alex, I know you are very optimistic about this whole trip but I’m not sure if we’ll be able to make it, we’re really running out of time”. He was was being a great friend at that point for being realistic and honest with me. However, as my mentor has always told me, you should never be realistic. Always be optimistic, dream big, and back those huge dreams up with an even bigger work ethic. A week later, we had a medical student coming from Penn State’s College of Medicine to be our driver and 7 Schreyer scholars ready to make a difference. We made it to our hotel in West Virginia, which was 7 hours away, around 3am. At 4:50am, we were up and on our way to the clinic. We spent our day volunteering from 5am until 6pm. We saw hundreds of patients, some so generous and thankful to the point that they shook every single volunteer’s hand. The following day was calmer but we still ended up offering $200,000 worth of care to over 500 patients in a single week-end. My fellow Penn Staters and myself had never worked that hard before in our life. However, the reward of helping people and making this trip happen was absolutely worth it. See below for pictures of our trip. 

We had such a great time and the people at RAM and Schreyer so happy that we are now working to create a student chapter of RAM here at Penn State. After talking with the clinic coordinator and officializing the club within the next month, we wil start working on organizing RAM’s first free clinic in Pennsylvania. If you’re interested in starting a RAM chapter at your institution, please let me know! There are a lot of people in the US that lack access to health care and this is what RAM is for! We as students can make a difference! 

Read the following article from Penn State News to find out about the details of our trip: http://news.psu.edu/story/496581/2017/12/04/impact/schreyer-group-hoping-set-local-clinic-following-volunteer-experience

#GoRAM

[afrenchie36]

Not dead yet

Hey everyone! I know, it’s been some time but here I am! There are so many things to talk about that I really don’t know what to start with! 

I guess I’ll start off with the fact that last may I had to chance to go back home for the first time in a year a half. I dearly missed my great city of Bordeaux and after 3 weeks of vacation there I went back to Pennsylvania to work for a second summer at Penn State’ College of Medicine as an MD/PhD intern. I worked some more on peripheral nerve tumors with my mentor Oliver and also worked on a few side projects. Overall, I had another amazing summer! Following are a few pictures of my break in Bordeaux and my summer in Hershey, PA. More in the next post!

#AlexsSummer

[afrenchie36]

Ambition

Well well well...as you can see I could be a much better blogger, especially concerning my consistency. Whatsoever, I have a lot to talk about in a very short amount of time since as you know, we are reaching the end of the academic semester and I am getting busier and busier. 

First, my academics have been going quite well. Classes are going very well, especially my EMT class which has been a lot of “fun”. What I find enjoyable about this EMT training course is this moment where you are reaching the end of the semester and you realise the knowledge and skills you have mastered throughout the semester. A few months ago, I was unable to make a proper patient assessment. Today, I am trained to provide basic life support to trauma patients, from a simple sprained ankle to securing a patient with major bleeding from a gunshot wound. Exciting, isn’t it? I still have to take the national exam at the end of the semester but if I start studying early, then everything will go well. Hopefully I will be able to volunteer at Penn State as an EMT next fall which would be quite the experience, otherwise there are Emergency Medical Services outside of campus for whom I could volunteer. 

Research wise, things have been going good as well. I am currently seeking independence in my lab at University Park which can be tricky since I am only an undergraduate student but hopefully my PI will let me work on my thesis project soon. I still have two years to work on that so I am not too worried, yet. On another note, I was also given the opportunity to present my cancer research at the New England Science Symposium held at Harvard Medical School this past weekend. It was very interesting to go back to Boston after two years and thinking about how much I have accomplished so far in my college career. To me, this is only the beginning of a great adventure. Hence, after a great weekend in Boston, spent meeting incredible scientists, I am back to Penn State, in the middle of nowhere, working in the hope of something bigger. Ambition in life is key. 

As a final note, I believe I had mentioned in previous posts the existence of Schreyer’s Integrated Undergraduate/Graduate (IUG) program in Neuroscience. My plan was to apply to this program in order to get a master’s in Neuroscience. Although many professors were supporting my decision of pursuing the master’s program, I have decided to seek balance instead of expertise. Therefore, I have recently declared a second major in Philosophy with a concentration on Bioethics, a degree of great use for some who seeks to become a physician-scientist. 

See ya everyone!

#FrenchieAPhilosopher

[afrenchie36]

Happy New Year everyone!

Much like everyone, I got back to school this week. I am now down to my 4th semester here at Penn State, meaning that I will soon be halfway into my journey in college. TIME FLIES!! 

This semester I am taking only 16 credits compared to my earlier semesters where I would be between 18 and 21. I will be studying animal and plant physiology in BIO 240, functional and integrative neurosciences in BIO 470, how to become an Emergency Medical Technician in KINES 403,  electromagnetism and waves in PHYS 251, and some general chemistry lab skills in CHEM 113. I am super pumped to take KINES 403 and BIO 470, two courses with A TON of information but extremely valuable for my career goals such as anatomy and patient treatment in KINES while I am learning more about how motor control and sensory information work in BIO 470. 

As always, my lab is going very well, I just got back days ago and I am now working on how Schwann cells, the cells of your peripheral nervous system, react when given vitamin B9. I am particularly interested in how much nerve growth factor they produce, which is important for nerve regeneration and would make vitamin B9 a great nutrient to treat peripheral nerve injuries. 

Lastly, during my trip to India, I had a lot of time to read which I used to learn more about Indian authors in the sciences. Hence, I would advise everyone to read “The Gene” by Siddartha Mukherjee, an oncologist at Columbia University originally from New Delhi. 

#AlexandreIsBackToSchool

[afrenchie36]

Long Time, No See

Hello Everyone,

            It seems like this semester I have had a tough time when it comes to consistency in my blog posting. I think the primary reason for such sloppiness is because I did not set myself any deadline for blogging and relied on my free time. However, I will be honest and tell you all that I have had a physically challenging semester. I overestimated myself and although I spent a quite busy summer working in Hershey, I did not take a break and went straight back to Penn State, thinking I would be fine. Unfortunately, my body caught up on me and I have been hit by constant fatigue this semester. As always, I kept myself busy with some challenging classes, the integration of a new lab at Penn State, some extra curriculars (some of them quite ephemeral), and I have been trying to be more healthy.

           This past semester I have taken molecular and cellular biology honors, an extremely interesting class taught by a fantastic professor who made me appreciate the molecular biology a lot more to the point that I was thinking about switching from Biology/Neuroscience to Biochemistry/Molecular Biology. However, my passionate for neuroscience could not be greater at this moment. This semester, I have chosen to take molecular neurobiology, the very first neuro course for my major, a year early (I was the only Sophomore in the class) and even though it proved to be challenging at times, I truly enjoyed it and am now looking forward to my next neuro course this spring which focuses on systems neuroscience (the biology of systems is more interested in the big picture rather than the molecular basis of things). This semester, I was also taking the second semester for general chemistry. I had a poor professor. It was an 8am. The material bored me to death. Needless to say that it was far from an enjoyable experience for me to go to forum, the most hatred location on Penn State campus for its huge classes taught at 8am, three times a week. On the other hand, I was rediscovering mechanics via the first semester of physics for my major. Finally, I was given the opportunity this semester to be a learning assistant for a class on research. It felt a lot like a first year seminar class for freshmen in the college of science to start learning about research opportunities. It was an interesting experience, but I am looking forward to get more experience as a teaching assistant for a real science class and not a first year seminar. However, I am thankful for getting to be a LA this semester as it prepared me for future interactions with students.

           As I have previously mentioned, this semester was physically tiring. The first few weeks felt very different from my Freshmen year. I had a hard time getting work done in the sense that I would not be able to stay up late for as long as I used to neither was I able to get up at 6am for my morning workout routine. A terrible feeling to feel tired. However, I have pushed through this physical barrier and finished my semester on what I would call a good note. I was able to maintain my 3.8 GPA this semester (technically 3.79 but let’s not be too picky). I developed well into my lab which was difficult at first but I managed to learn quickly and prove myself to my graduate student. Since I am assigned my own project, I feel more engaged in my work, which is crucial for the learning environment of undergraduate students like me. As for the bad notes, my work as a medical career development coordinator went well although I think I could have taken more responsibilities for myself. The paper that I have been working on with my lab in Hershey has been going very slowly, a lot of procrastination which increased my stress levels during a tough semester. The final and most obvious bad note is my health, I have barely been working out, did not eat very healthy and my sleep has been constantly perturbed until the end of the semester following Thanksgiving break when I realized that it became too big of an issue.

           This semester has also been quite eventful. I would like to give a shout out to Penn State Rowing team which is filled with great people. I have given it a shot at the beginning of the semester but realized after a week and a half of going to daily practices that I did not enjoy myself as much as I think I did neither would be able to handle the time dedicated to practices and competitions. Another shout out to Global Brigades Public Health which I found myself joining a month after the semester started as a secretary without participating in Global Brigades at all the previous year. Global Brigades is an organization with a chapter at Penn State which organizes week long brigades in South American countries where students have the opportunity to help underprivileged communities. The Public Health section of Global Brigades at Penn State has a hard time growing as people (mostly premed kids seeking to build up their resume) are more involved in the Medical section of Global Brigades and could not care less about public health although both have the capacity of protecting people’s health, however Global Medical sounds a bit more glamour. This semester, I also felt overwhelmed with applications such as the one for Schreyer Orientation which I totally forgot to fill in (the deadline was at the same time as my conference). I was also nominated to be a speaker at State of State, a student run conference emphasizing the importance of advancement in the college community. I kept telling myself that I did not really have anything to share in order to become a speaker but it definitely is an excuse for my lack of time management this past semester.

           Research wise, things could not have gone any better this semester. As I have previously mentioned in my blog, I have had the opportunity to present my research on a new chemotherapy for the treatment of peripheral nerve tumors at a conference in Tampa, Florida. I was lucky enough to present my research and got even luckier to receive a prize for my presentation. I met incredibly bright individuals at this conference which is a great motivation to have. Whenever I think back to this conference I remember the guest speakers that came, the lessons I took away from their talk, and what I should expect from myself. I was fortunate enough to win a prize and was simply expecting to go home, tell my family, friends, and mentor and not necessarily think of it anymore. However, I was late contacted by the Schreyer Honor College PR who wanted to write an article on me and the research I did at Hershey. Little did I know that he would not only share this article with Schreyer but also with the Penn State community. I am very thankful for the opportunities Schreyer gives me, I would not have been able to conduct such research and find a new passion within cancer research. Heres’s a picture of the prize winners in Cancer Biology (I’m the second man starting from the left, back row):

            Therefore, after such a ruthless semester I am now resting and visiting the other side of the Western world: INDIA. I am indeed spending winter break visiting India with my roommate Nakul who’s originally from New Delhi. So far I have had the opportunity to discover a lot on the history of the country, the current political/social situations, as well as the delicious and well diverse local food! I will write a full blog post on it but here’s a sneak pic of my roommate and myself at the Taj Mahal.

#AlexandreIsBack

[afrenchie36]

Hello everyone! This is the second time I am writing this post since I have started it this week, forgot to save it and my laptop died :DDDD

It has been a while, I know, but I am back to give you some updates on my life in college. First, I need to tell you about my classes. This semester I am taking Neurobio, molecular bio honors, first semester physics, second semester inorganic chemistry, and I am a TA for a course named “Introduction to Research in Science”. So far, I have had exams in every single on of my classes and I don’t think I did too well on them. I neuro, I got a 87.5 on the first exam, however it is an A thanks to the curve, but it’s only going to get harder. In molecular bio, I made a low grade which doesn’t penalize me that much since it counts as a very low percentage of my grade but still, it’s not good. In chem, I got a 92 by cramming the week-end before the exam, and finally I took my physics exam this past week for which I unfortunately crammed too. I have not been doing well lately due to procrastination and fatigue (I have been sick for a while). Therefore, now is the time to get back on track and study like a boss again, I will not let my GPA go down, it ain’t happening. 

Remember: 

On the other hand, my research work has been going pretty well. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I have changed lab, I am now working in the biomedical engineering department and it’s actually fascinating. I am currently learning under the mentorship of a graduate student by working on nerve regeneration using vitamin B9, a project in collaboration with my lab back in Hershey, a good opportunity some later time. Talking about Hershey, I have been procrastinating a lot concerning the review paper I am working on and I will have to get back to it, I need to step up my game. Finally, I have submitted my abstract from my work in Hershey to the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students and it got accepted! Therefore I will be presenting my research to a major conference in November riiiiiiiight here: 

THE TAMPA CONVENTION CENTER!!!

I guess I will be talking about my extra curricular activities for a bit. As you know, I am a Schreyer medical career development coordinator and the work has been pretty fun so far, mostly consisting of organizing the Schreyer treks to Weil Cornell Medical School in NYC and the Hershey Primary Care Day at the Penn State College of Medicine. I also recently became the secretary for Penn State Global Brigades Public Health. Although most premed kids at Penn State do the Medical Chapter of Global Brigades, I felt like doing Public Health would introduce me to something new by going to trips in Central America to ameliorate the health of families in rural communities by providing them access to clean water for example, learn more by going to the Global Brigades website https://www.globalbrigades.org/ . I should also mention that I have submitted my application to do EMT training next semester since I was supposed to do it this fall however a conflict with physics prevented me from taking the class. 

Finally, here a pic from Kanye West’s concert last night at Penn State (IT WAS FREAKING AMAZING)

#FrenchieIsStronger

[afrenchie36]

End of summer

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a summer as amazing as mine! 

As I have mentioned in my latest post, I have spent the summer at Penn State’s College of Medicine through Schreyer’s MD/PhD Summer Exposure Program, an opportunity for four Schreyer scholars in their first year as well as returning interns to work in a biomedical research lab under the mentorship of a MD/PhD faculty. Throughout the past 10 weeks, I had the opportunity to work with Dr.Connor in the Department of Neurosurgery and work on a new chemotherapy drug for the treatment of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors. In addition, my internship gave me the privilege to shadow a MD/PhD physician once a week to have an inside view of the life of a MD/PhD physician. Nonetheless to say that I was quite busy. However, since I believed that I should make the most out of this internship, knowing that living right next to a hospital  would not happen anytime soon, I decided to talk to the chief residents of neurosurgery and I managed to shadow the entire team of neurosurgical residents every morning for a duration of three weeks. I witnessed many operations and I even made some friends! I’ve also been introduced to anatomy through cadavers destined to medical students. Finally, I am in the process of writing a paper thanks to Dr.Connor who kindly accepted to help me improve my skills at scientific writing and gave me a subject to work on, I will tell you more about it later. 

Overall, I had a great summer and I will hopefully come back next summer to do further work with Dr.Connor! 

Here’s me posing write next to my poster presentation on my summer work.

That time my fellow interns in different programs at the College of Medicine and myself went on a dinosaur hunt in Harrisburg, PA

Casually posing (I only picked medicine cause modeling is too mainstream)

The beginning of the summer when we drove an hour to see camel races

Finally, when I wasn’t working in the lab, writing or watching operations, I baked and gave myself food comas on a weekly basis

#FrenchiesSummer

[afrenchie36]

June

Hey everyone! 

I just wanted to give you a quick update on my current situation! So, as you may know, I started my MD/PhD summer internship on May 31st. For the past month I have been working in Dr.James Connor’s lab which is part of Penn State College of Medicine’s Neurosurgery department. I am working under the mentorship of a MD/PhD student, Oliver, who happens to possess the same career goals as me, which consists of graduating from a MD/PhD program and become a neurosurgeon. Because my lab is in the department of neurosurgery, I had the opportunity to work with neurosurgeons who happened to propose me to shadow them. Hence, I have been shadowing the neurosurgery team o residents and attendings for the past three weeks and I had the extreme privilege to observe surgeries in the operating room. It is therefore with extreme certainty that I can tell you, my readers, that I want to become a surgeon. Obviously, I will remain opened to different specialties in surgery but for now my preference is neuro. As for my lab work, I have been working on a novel chemotherapy drug in the treatment of malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors, a rare type of cancer that is quite fatal due to the limited amount of treatments available. Also, Dr.Connor assigned me to a special project that is not part of my internship which is to write a review paper on cerebral hypoxia and iron deficiency anemia with the end goal of publishing it and hopefully lead a paradigm shift in the medical community when it comes to the treatment of iron deficiency anemia. 

As for the rest of my life, I guess everything is going well! My family is doing great back in Bordeaux! I am currently trying to get a driver’s license in the US which requires a Social Security Number that I did not have before starting my internship, but that I now do! I bonded a lot with my fellow interns and I think we are a pretty great group of friends. So far I have been “physically active” with them, went on night time hikes, baked magnificent peanut butter cup cookie cakes, watched all Harry Potters, and went to some crazy parties!! 

Peace guys!! 

#FrenchieOnFleek

[afrenchie36]

End of the year

Even though I still do not consider myself a sophomore, I took my last finals of my freshman year in early May. I started my MD/PhD summer internship at Hershey yesterday and I am taking advantage of having a bit of time off this week to write a post about my freshman year in college. 

First of all, the transition wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Some of my friends at Scheyer started developing depression soon after they first arrived at Penn State, thus I am considering myself pretty lucky to go through the transition from French high school to an American top program, far away from my family, and not suffering from it.  One advice that I would give though is to do your best to have people on your side, whichever institution you choose to attend. People that you can talk to whenever you’re feeling blue. You will eventually need it when you feel homesick or not do as well as you wish in your classes, trust me. One experience that really affected me was taking BIO 110H my first semester. It was quite a rough start as the level between high school Bio in France and honors Bio at Penn State is quite different. At some point, I really thought I was going to give up and go back to France. I had done so bad on my first exam that I questioned my future biology career. I felt so bad that I called my parents and confessed to them that I did not know what to do with my life. Again, have people on your side. Not only did my parents helped me, but my best friend from France did too. I texted him about my situation and my thoughts of going back to France. He replied to me “Man, you’ve been working hard for the past two years to get into such program, the Alexandre I know would never give up this easily”.  So here I am now, not giving up.

As for the classes, you have to do your best to balance out everything, you do not want more than 18 credits per semester, otherwise you will not have the time to get plenty of experience outside of class (research, volunteering, clubs), and your health will suffer from it. Instead, take an average amount of credits, 14-16 credit per semester, find ways to get ahead without putting your GPA at any risks (summer and online classes). Interviewers for summer programs will care a lot more about what you’ve done outside of class, this is what makes the difference. Also, watch out for your health, it is a big factor for your success in college and by staying healthy physically you will stay healthy mentally. It really is depressing to see students torturing themselves by not being organized, pulling all-nighters when they really did not have to, and lacking efficiency when studying. Please guys, do your best not to lose your time, this is the most valuable thing you have and some college students spend it getting trashed or watching Netflix, to all my readers, you are better than that. Get enough sleep, eat healthy, work out at least three times a week and stay organized.

So far, I had a great freshman year. I learned a lot, especially from my mistakes, and I cannot wait for what’s coming next. As I said at the beginning of my post, I just started my MD/PhD internship at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center and today I will be meeting with my PI and hopefully will get to work as soon as possible. 

Final advice, you may not be the brightest, but it is your discipline and your work ethic that will bring you to the top. 

#FreshmanYearIsOver

[afrenchie36]

Survived Finals

Hey everyone! I just got done with my finals, so I am writing this post while running on 5 hours of sleep over the past two days^^ 

First of all, I would like to let everyone know that my finals went well, I managed to make A’s on every subject even though I took a pretty high amount of credits. This semester was quite stressful mainly because I had never taken 21 credits before and the work load that goes with it is significant. I wanted to test myself, see what it feels like to take a lot of credits and trying to balance classes, lab work, as well as an healthy lifestyle. Frankly, 21 credits was way too much and my goal is to plan my next 3 years so well that I will never have to do such thing ever again. 

Next fall, not only I will only be taking 16 credits, but I will be taking classes that are all pretty related to each others: introduction to neuroscience, molecular biology honors section, inorganic chemistry II, and Emergency Medical Technician training. Useless to say that I cannot wait for the fall! I will only be taking classes that I have an interest in and pretty related to each others! I will also be working in my research lab and I will also be working for Schreyer’s career development’s team as a medical career development coordinator, working with three other scholars to organize discussions, presentations, and trips to medical schools for Schreyer scholars. 

Finally, I have officially moved out of my dorms, which kind of makes me sad since it has already been a year of college and it flew by incredibly fast! However, my belief on this is that it went by fast because I was having the best time of my life, I would not trade my experience so far with anything and I surely have made the best decision by committing to Schreyer. This is which I am making a shoutout to Myos for helping me making the right decisions back in high school as well as in college! 

#FrenchieSurvived

[afrenchie36]

MD/PhD Summer program

Alright Alright Alright 

In my last post I talked about how bad everything was going for me, particularly due to the fact that I was getting rejected from all the programs I applied to. My last chance to do something very interesting over the summer other than working in my lab and taking classes was to get into Penn State College of Medicine’s MD/PhD summer exposure program for Schreyer scholars. This 10-weeks long program is only accessible to 4 Schreyer scholars each summer, either Freshmen or Sophomores, and consist of working in a research lab under the supervision of an MD/PhD faculty member. 

I submitted my application on March the 1st and I was offered an interview on Friday April 8th. I showed up to my interview, suited up, and saw all those extremely smart Schreyer scholars that I had to compete against. I met with the interviewers and I think everything went pretty well for me. They asked me a lot about my research, my motivations as to why I want to become an MD/PhD, as well as my background in science. 

I would say I was pretty confident about this interview. The next step though was to attend the MD/PhD retreat at Nittany Lion Inn, Penn State’s highly ranked hotel. This retreat is set every year at the same time for Penn State’s MD/PhD students and its faculty members to come and give presentations about their research, Ted talks, ect. So I attended this pretty formal retreat which went on from 11am until 9pm on Saturday and 7am until 12pm on Sunday. On Saturday, most students showed up because they knew we were supposed to if we wanted to have a chance in getting into the summer program. I got to talk a lot with current MD/PhD students and all of them were very extroverted compared to what I was imagining. I did my best to be the last student to leave the retreat on Saturday to show that I really wanted to participate in the program. I came back to my dorm, exhausted and went to sleep as soon as I reached my bed. I was not sure if it was worth it to show up on Sunday morning, but since I woke up at 4am on that day I thought that if I gave everything I had then I would not regret not getting in the program. I showed up, had a great brunch and MD/PhD students in their last year of Medical school spent the entire morning giving me advices on what to do in undergrad to become successful. This weekend was extremely valuable for my personal growth and even if I did not get into the program, I would have been glad I participated in this retreat. 

I was supposed to hear back from the directors of the program the following week. It turns out that I had an answer on Monday afternoon: I got in! I am one of the four honors students offered the MD/PhD internship at Hershey and I am even offered a 4,000$ stipend for the duration of the program! I could not be any happier, especially because this program could directly lead to an MD/PhD student position at Penn State’s College of Medicine. Finally one good news. I am going to spend the summer doing research both in my lab and at Hershey and I could not be more excited. All I have left to do is to survive through this tough semester in which I have been taking 21 credits, and everything will be alright!!

#FrenchieAtHershey

[afrenchie36]

A page a day

Hey everyone! 

If you guys are free 5 minutes a day, I would suggest you to read my new blog. this blog has been created specifically with the goal to improve my English by forcing myself to write a page every single day. Let’s see how much I am capable of! 

http://alexandrebourcier0.wix.com/monsite

#FrenchiesChallenge

[afrenchie36]

Not at my best

Hey everyone! 

Sorry if I haven’t posted anything in a while, I was busy and those past two weeks were pretty rough for me. As I have written in one of my previous posts, I have applied to the Presidential Leadership Academy which is a four year program at Penn State with only 30 students per class who have the potential to become great leaders. I submitted my application in March and was supposed to know whether I got an interview on the 24th of March. On that day, everyone received an email from PLA, except me. I emailed and called them multiple times, but no response. I only received an answer the day before the beginning of the interviews, a very professional move from the Academy, and learned that I was not offered an interview. Ouch. 

Then came Leadership Jumpstart, the first year Schreyer class I took last semester. Like many of my classmates I applied to be a TA, but did not get the position. 

Even better. The special living option in which I live, the Globe, requires 10 Globe points per semester for each resident to stay. We can earn points by hosting or attending events about global issues and culture. My roommate and I have the highest number of points out of all the residents and we even hosted a global culture quiz. However, the director of the Globe who managed to find us a spot for the spring semester told us last week that we will be on the waitlist for this special living option next semester due to the fact that we are “technically” not part of the Globe because we got in halfway through the year. This is what my roommate and I call injustice knowing how much time and work we have put in to gain points and remain in the Globe. 

Thank god I have my laboratory, it’s probably the only thing that keep me from going insane. Remember guys, sometimes you will feel down due to multiple failures, but life is all about facing those failures and use them as a motivation to do better. 

#FrenchieDoesntGiveUp

[afrenchie36]

Spring Break

Hello everyone! 

First, I would like to congratulate all the prospective students who have been accepted into Schreyer’s class of 2020! I can’t believe it has already been a year since I made what seemed to be the impossible and I could not have chosen a better school to spend the next four years of my life. As for those who have not been accepted, do not be discouraged. Schreyer is an extremely competitive school and whatever school you choose to go to will be a great fit for you as long as you put in the required effort to make the most out of your college experience. 

It is almost the end of spring break so I think it would be good to give an overview of what I have done so far. 

I left State College on Saturday morning last week with my roommate Nakul and went to his aunt’s and uncle’s place in Hershey, PA. We rested on Saturday and on Sunday morning at 6am we caught a train to get to Philadelphia. We spent the day in Phillie and had the chance to visit both the Benjamin Franklin Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. I had a lot of fun, especially at the Benjamin Franklin Museum as they had a Neuroscience exposition :DDD

We then went back to Hershey in the evening traveling in a Megabus, a very cheap transportation that can get you in any big city on the North-East Coast of the United States. 

On Monday, I had the privilege to tour Hershey Medical Center, where Penn State’s School of Medicine is situated and hopefully where I will spend my summer through Hershey’s MD/PhD summer exposure program. Both Nakul’s uncle and aunt work at the cancer center therefore I had the ability to tour most of the center and to meet a couple of neurosurgeons and neuroscientist. On Monday evening I took a Megabus to go back to state college and spent the week working in my research laboratory to perfect my surgical techniques  and manage to perform a full survival surgery on a rodent without any supervision.

I had a fun and productive spring break, hopefully everyone’s will go as well as mine! 

Peace!  

#FrenchiesSpringBreak