IT'S TIME TO PRESENT MY RESEARCH

During the week of November 11 to November 13, some of the key points that were learned in the Independent Study and Mentorship class was conducting the fourth informational interview, creating an original work proposal, presenting the research speech, and continuing to make phone calls to potential mentors for brief informational interviews. The first accomplishment that was achieved this week was successfully conducting the fourth informational interview with Dr. Katherine Harrington. The interview was held with Dr. Katherine Harrington, who is a cardiothoracic surgeon at Baylor Heart Hospital in Plano. She provided me with a vast amount of knowledge about cardiothoracic surgery, including her college life, family life, and her integrated residential program. Dr. Harrington graduated from Stanford University, completing her undergraduate and medical school there. Then, during her residential program, Dr. Harrington was so set on cardiothoracic surgery being her field that she completed an integrated residential program. In an integrated residential program, instead of completing the basic five years of general surgery and one year of specialty surgery, the resident goes directly into six years of a specialty surgery. This week, another accomplishment that I achieved was writing and presenting my first draft of the research speech. This speech compiled a shortened introduction along with all of the research and interviews that I conducted, and all together it was approximately 10 minutes long. Some of the challenges that I faced this week was contacting the professionals because doctors are incredibly hard to get in contact with because of their schedules. I now feel much more confident in speaking with professionals, and I see the growth from the beginning, where I used to stutter a lot, to now where everything comes with proper sentence flow. My future goal for the next week in ISM is to become more organized and refrain from procrastination.