I spent a long time trying to decide if MD PhD programs were right for me, and I spent quite a bit of that time lingering around forums like this one. I ended up choosing to apply to grad school without applying to MD PhD programs, and wanted to share my experiences thus far.
The first 12 months of grad school have been extremely exciting and way more challenging than I ever could have anticipated. Some of the best times, some of the worst times. Just this weekend started with a blood pressure of 160/140 after stopping one of my 15 meds did not go as planned. Was losing my vision and walking became limping, but I'm still standing so that's something I suppose. Finally reached a point where I stopped denying that I now have narcolepsy. 8 months ago, my sleep specialist told me the symptoms I was presenting with is how narcolepsy develops, and at this point I have sadly discovered that his fears ended up coming true. When stress/bad times/narcolepsy hits, I legitimately pass out now. I have tried to push through it, but this is when I have discovered I now simply fall asleep, and cannot wake back up for an average of 12 hours. I am averaging 12 hours of sleep per night, even though tests have shown I have a very low deep sleep ratio. No amount of sleep makes me feel rested - I only wake up feeling so exhausted that I tend to pass out immediately after every single alarm, for multiple hours (sometimes 6). I don't get 12 hours of sleep straight, but I cannot wake up until 12 hours have elapsed within my bed. The sleep is not at all restful, and I have no will to sleep - but I simply cannot fight hard enough to stay awake any longer.
HOWEVER, this has not even been the most extreme part of my week. I actually reached the point where I don't think I have even ever experienced so much happiness in my entire life. Before I started grad school, I had been diagnosed with a mysterious condition that had sent me to 50 specialists in 2 short years. I was told that I had exhausted all treatment options, that there were no doctors left to refer me to, no lifestyle changes left to recommend, just nothing. I decided that I needed to commit my life to researching my own health problems, which no doctor knows how to treat, in the hopes of being able to one day develop new treatment options for people who suffer from the same conditions as me. I set goals for myself that I expected would either take many years to achieve, or would be so difficult that I could never actually expect to accomplish them - but used them to motivate myself to funnel my determination to succeed, no matter how difficult it may get. One goal was to own my own research lab that would allow me to decide what to research, which I knew would not be possible to research under any other lab, since it isn't interesting enough or profitable enough. Another goal was to integrate high performance computing with experimental biology, to use the best that computers and biology have to offer us, together in an integrated approach that allows for iterated experimental design, computational analysis and prediction of new conclusions to confirm experimentally, and being able to actually carry out those experiments myself - rather than publishing into the abyss and hoping that someone else will someday pick up where I left off. Since I am driven by the problem I want to solve far more than the discipline I choose to work within, I tend to not fit into the structure of grad school or academia very easily. I have not found any mentors who think in terms of both experimental and computational approaches in the way that I would like to. This leaves me with no one to moderate or check in at all with my thoughts, and plenty of persuasion that I am absolutely insane for taking on so much and that I need to move towards a more feasible workload and work style.
When I set goals to run my own research lab, research my own health, and integrate high performance computing with experimental biology, I completely expected to need to pursue and land a tenure track position before being able to even start any of these. This week, I realized that much to my surprise I am already living out my dream. I have created an iGEM genetic engineering team at my university, after enjoying my experience with an iGEM team during my undergrad chemical engineering degree. I am legitimately running my own lab - to a degree even higher than I had anticipated or realized while I joking tossed those words out a mere few months ago. I picked a project topic based on my computational research, recruited 5 grad students to help me design the project, recruited 15 undegrads, trained them to comprehend the scientific principles of the project as well as research, which just about all of them were completely new to. I also budgeted the project to take $10,000, far lower than the average project in iGEM uses, and secured the entire $10,000. I have purchased the reagents for my project, and have an entire team of 15 undergrads, 5 grad students, and several professors supporting and advising the team, and the project focus is on making gut microbiome therapeutics that can be more targeted than broad spectrum antibiotics. It is a small step, but it is feasible for the few months we have before presenting at the international iGEM conference in November.
Even with all the challenges I have had thrown at me, I have somehow still managed to come through with a huge amount of success in a single year of graduate school. I am already running my own lab, which I never would have thought could be possible at age 22. The project my current iGEM team is focusing on is using genetic engineering to collect data that has never been reported in literature before, and that data can then feed into the computational analysis towards my thesis. I am now starting to get excited at the idea of staying at my university through multiple iGEM teams, and iterating computational predictions with short experiments that make all computational approaches directly relevant to experiments that can actually be carried out with the technology and knowledge we have available to us today, and streamlining the production of new therapeutics without needing to depend on other specialists to make my results relevant or meaningful. I am still able to collaborate, network, and learn plenty from other researchers, from various disciplines, which I have been able to incorporate into my master plan. The perspective that my diverse health issues have given me has allowed me to take a systems biology approach to view a system as the sum of its parts, based entirely on known facts from literature that can be incorporated together in a proposed network that tells a coherent story from all of the complexity held within. I have been able to use my personal experiences as a full time patient, reports from patient populations who are just as frustrated and desperate for relief as me, and scientific research methods to develop hypotheses that I can test with data that has already been collected - which could explain why a cluster of 6+ syndromes has such high comorbidity rates that most patients diagnosed with one tend to also get diagnosed with at least one or two other syndromes within this comorbidity matrix. I have been able to come up with hypotheses that could explain how the underlying physiology shared by all of these conditions could explain how these are caused, and serve as a single bottle neck that can be targeted for therapeutics that could benefit all of these conditions. Going into grad school with one diagnosis that doctors could not treat which I wanted to research, and then developing various symptoms that led to 6 additional diagnoses in a single year has been much more challenging than I ever could have anticipated, but I have grown from it all nevertheless.
I saw the awesome power of integrating computational and experimental biology, much like the way an MD PhD degree integrates two independent approaches. I did not have the best luck preparing for med school prereqs, which became clear when I had to drop my comparative animal physiology class after attempting to meet with my professor while struggling in the class, and forgetting the word hippocampus while trying to explain my dilemma. I had a right temporal lobectomy at age 17 for epilepsy that I had my entire life, and I have been seizure free since then. However, I was not able to memorize the list of facts that biology and medicine most definitely requires you to be able to memorize. I needed to learn how to learn after struggling early on in college, being blocked by disabilities that made learning and processing more challenging. I was given a lot of resistance by many who told me that I would never have the slightest chance in hell of succeeding, but I proved them wrong. I proved that you have never truly exhausted all opportunities, no matter how difficult the mission at hand may seem. I have been able to start my research career on the medical research that I very much made it my dream to do, and I encourage anyone with enough determination to find a way to be just as successful.
The first 12 months of grad school have been extremely exciting and way more challenging than I ever could have anticipated. Some of the best times, some of the worst times. Just this weekend started with a blood pressure of 160/140 after stopping one of my 15 meds did not go as planned. Was losing my vision and walking became limping, but I'm still standing so that's something I suppose. Finally reached a point where I stopped denying that I now have narcolepsy. 8 months ago, my sleep specialist told me the symptoms I was presenting with is how narcolepsy develops, and at this point I have sadly discovered that his fears ended up coming true. When stress/bad times/narcolepsy hits, I legitimately pass out now. I have tried to push through it, but this is when I have discovered I now simply fall asleep, and cannot wake back up for an average of 12 hours. I am averaging 12 hours of sleep per night, even though tests have shown I have a very low deep sleep ratio. No amount of sleep makes me feel rested - I only wake up feeling so exhausted that I tend to pass out immediately after every single alarm, for multiple hours (sometimes 6). I don't get 12 hours of sleep straight, but I cannot wake up until 12 hours have elapsed within my bed. The sleep is not at all restful, and I have no will to sleep - but I simply cannot fight hard enough to stay awake any longer.
HOWEVER, this has not even been the most extreme part of my week. I actually reached the point where I don't think I have even ever experienced so much happiness in my entire life. Before I started grad school, I had been diagnosed with a mysterious condition that had sent me to 50 specialists in 2 short years. I was told that I had exhausted all treatment options, that there were no doctors left to refer me to, no lifestyle changes left to recommend, just nothing. I decided that I needed to commit my life to researching my own health problems, which no doctor knows how to treat, in the hopes of being able to one day develop new treatment options for people who suffer from the same conditions as me. I set goals for myself that I expected would either take many years to achieve, or would be so difficult that I could never actually expect to accomplish them - but used them to motivate myself to funnel my determination to succeed, no matter how difficult it may get. One goal was to own my own research lab that would allow me to decide what to research, which I knew would not be possible to research under any other lab, since it isn't interesting enough or profitable enough. Another goal was to integrate high performance computing with experimental biology, to use the best that computers and biology have to offer us, together in an integrated approach that allows for iterated experimental design, computational analysis and prediction of new conclusions to confirm experimentally, and being able to actually carry out those experiments myself - rather than publishing into the abyss and hoping that someone else will someday pick up where I left off. Since I am driven by the problem I want to solve far more than the discipline I choose to work within, I tend to not fit into the structure of grad school or academia very easily. I have not found any mentors who think in terms of both experimental and computational approaches in the way that I would like to. This leaves me with no one to moderate or check in at all with my thoughts, and plenty of persuasion that I am absolutely insane for taking on so much and that I need to move towards a more feasible workload and work style.
When I set goals to run my own research lab, research my own health, and integrate high performance computing with experimental biology, I completely expected to need to pursue and land a tenure track position before being able to even start any of these. This week, I realized that much to my surprise I am already living out my dream. I have created an iGEM genetic engineering team at my university, after enjoying my experience with an iGEM team during my undergrad chemical engineering degree. I am legitimately running my own lab - to a degree even higher than I had anticipated or realized while I joking tossed those words out a mere few months ago. I picked a project topic based on my computational research, recruited 5 grad students to help me design the project, recruited 15 undegrads, trained them to comprehend the scientific principles of the project as well as research, which just about all of them were completely new to. I also budgeted the project to take $10,000, far lower than the average project in iGEM uses, and secured the entire $10,000. I have purchased the reagents for my project, and have an entire team of 15 undergrads, 5 grad students, and several professors supporting and advising the team, and the project focus is on making gut microbiome therapeutics that can be more targeted than broad spectrum antibiotics. It is a small step, but it is feasible for the few months we have before presenting at the international iGEM conference in November.
Even with all the challenges I have had thrown at me, I have somehow still managed to come through with a huge amount of success in a single year of graduate school. I am already running my own lab, which I never would have thought could be possible at age 22. The project my current iGEM team is focusing on is using genetic engineering to collect data that has never been reported in literature before, and that data can then feed into the computational analysis towards my thesis. I am now starting to get excited at the idea of staying at my university through multiple iGEM teams, and iterating computational predictions with short experiments that make all computational approaches directly relevant to experiments that can actually be carried out with the technology and knowledge we have available to us today, and streamlining the production of new therapeutics without needing to depend on other specialists to make my results relevant or meaningful. I am still able to collaborate, network, and learn plenty from other researchers, from various disciplines, which I have been able to incorporate into my master plan. The perspective that my diverse health issues have given me has allowed me to take a systems biology approach to view a system as the sum of its parts, based entirely on known facts from literature that can be incorporated together in a proposed network that tells a coherent story from all of the complexity held within. I have been able to use my personal experiences as a full time patient, reports from patient populations who are just as frustrated and desperate for relief as me, and scientific research methods to develop hypotheses that I can test with data that has already been collected - which could explain why a cluster of 6+ syndromes has such high comorbidity rates that most patients diagnosed with one tend to also get diagnosed with at least one or two other syndromes within this comorbidity matrix. I have been able to come up with hypotheses that could explain how the underlying physiology shared by all of these conditions could explain how these are caused, and serve as a single bottle neck that can be targeted for therapeutics that could benefit all of these conditions. Going into grad school with one diagnosis that doctors could not treat which I wanted to research, and then developing various symptoms that led to 6 additional diagnoses in a single year has been much more challenging than I ever could have anticipated, but I have grown from it all nevertheless.
I saw the awesome power of integrating computational and experimental biology, much like the way an MD PhD degree integrates two independent approaches. I did not have the best luck preparing for med school prereqs, which became clear when I had to drop my comparative animal physiology class after attempting to meet with my professor while struggling in the class, and forgetting the word hippocampus while trying to explain my dilemma. I had a right temporal lobectomy at age 17 for epilepsy that I had my entire life, and I have been seizure free since then. However, I was not able to memorize the list of facts that biology and medicine most definitely requires you to be able to memorize. I needed to learn how to learn after struggling early on in college, being blocked by disabilities that made learning and processing more challenging. I was given a lot of resistance by many who told me that I would never have the slightest chance in hell of succeeding, but I proved them wrong. I proved that you have never truly exhausted all opportunities, no matter how difficult the mission at hand may seem. I have been able to start my research career on the medical research that I very much made it my dream to do, and I encourage anyone with enough determination to find a way to be just as successful.
