By Min-Jui Lawrence Sun, MED 2015 Participant
I have to say, this summer vacation is the most meaningful one to me because I participated in 2015 VIA MED program. Being a medical student, I gain much knowledge and thoughts in this program.
The most important activities and workshops in these three weeks are clinical English, shadowing in a hospital, design thinking, LGBTQ care, organ transplantation, and culture difference discussion. Besides these, a lot of speeches were held during this program. Many doctors and professors shared their experience to us. There are different topics for each speech, and all of them are incredibly inspiring. On the other hand, we visit many institutions and sight-seeing places in the Bay area such as UCSF hospital, Stanford hospital, cancer care center, helicopter for emergency, Silicon Valley, San Francisco Giant baseball game……and so on. Also, there’s one day for San Francisco trip. Students and fellows can build up their friendship while having a breathtaking trip. Besides all of the above, I found that I learned the most in the dormitory where all the participants from different countries had midnight talks for many days. I learned a lot from them, and those learning and experiences are just too much to briefly describe.
For academic aspects, the most important motivation of my presence in this program are to figure out whether there’s possibility for me to go to the US to be a doctor, how’s the life style here, how’s the medical environment here, and finally I can make a goal for the next few years of my life: spending most of my time to prepare for USMLE or the doctor license exam in Taiwan. On the other hand, I list some other questions that I expected to find out answer during this program. This program totally satisfied my needs. During these three weeks, I got all the answers of my question list. I had countless experiences and inspiring thoughts during the program. There are so many things that I had never thought about. Three weeks seems like a short period. However, it brings me so many unforgettable and life-changing thoughts. I think I am really lucky because not every student has this kind of precious experience.
I made at least 40 friends from several countries during these three weeks. We shared our own ideas, discussed about what we knew and what we were still unknown. We had fun every day, and we had deep, inspiring talks at midnight. I am confident that these friendships will last long for decades. After this program, I’ll take a 5 days trip to Japan to visit these friends. They will definitely give me a great experience.
I believe that although this program is not 100% perfect, it is surely a program that really worth participate in. I will highly recommend my friends who are also majoring in medicine to join this program next year.
