The Harvard Years

I had finally made my way to Harvard Medical School (HMS) despite my misgivings of leaving my wife, 2 year old son and the baby on the way back in Milwaukee. It couldn’t get any more difficult, right? On September 26, about 2 weeks into my medical school education, my wife delivered the baby…and a baby. She had twins and the doctor did not even know. Now I had a family of four and was two weeks into being educated at the top medical school in the country and maybe the world. And, my family was not well off financially. It had been difficult enough to just get the money to get to Boston, and now…?

I was supposed to have attended a summer pre-entry program that summer, but my wife’s pregnancy and my need to work had precluded that. One thing I did was to buy and read the Lehninger book on biochemistry. I never had a true biochem course and had been told how difficult this was. So, during my first week I decided to take the exam to place out of biochemistry, it would give me time to work. The other students taking the placement test had had biochemistry at some of the best schools in the country…the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT and others. I had come from a small midwest liberal arts college that had no formal biochemistry course.  Out of the 160 entrants, not all took the exam, I was one of eight to place out of biochemistry. So, those hours other first year students were spending in biochemistry, I spent working as an instructor for the Greater Boston Collaborative, an alternative high school. That was during the year. I had the summer off that first year, and I had to work.

I contacted Dr. William Wallace who was the director of the Harvard Health Careers Summer Program (HCSP). He initially stated there were no jobs left for students during the summer. But, he needed someone to teach a MCAT prep, and with the help of Dr. Alvin Pouissant’s intervention, I was able to get the job teaching the MCAT prep. I had told both that I could do it even though I had not one bit of material to teach it. I used the fact that I had scored in the 99th plus percentile on the science and math portions to push the issue. I needed a job. They agreed to give me the chance. Now I would have to deliver.