Yaniris Molina Aponte
Research technologist and laboratory manager, Johns Hopkins University
Mid-COVID-19 pandemic, two summers ago, I left my beloved island of Puerto Rico to pursue my dream of in the States – a land where resources and opportunities are thought to be plentiful. The last I remember of my island, was glancing over the warm blue beach in Old San Juan, the waves crashing against the shore, realizing this was just the start of a long journey in my pursuit of education and training as a physician-scientist. This journey is not without enormous challenges and hurdles to overcome, but the complicated journey that is required often keeps students like me out of the running.
Becoming a physician or physician-scientist is a challenging endeavor. Not only did I have to complete pre-medical school requisites (college courses, MCAT, extracurricular activities and research), I also took tests like the CasPer test and the AAMC Situational Judgement exam (now PREview exam). The first paramount challenge was the MCAT. The exam which consists of four sections, and it is 7 hours and 30 minutes long is daunting. Preparing for it is like training for a race. It takes time, patience, commitment, and perseverance to train every day to develop the strength to finish it. However, after preparing for several months, many pre-meds like me were faced with the uncertainty of having the MCAT rescheduled or even canceled. Due to the pandemic, these were common actions taken to ensure the safety of the candidates, but it represented an added burden to them. As the date got closer, every day I would wake up shaking while checking for my exam appointment because I feared that it might have been rescheduled or cancelled. The uncertainty was strong and for an anxious student like me, it often meant not sleeping because I had to overthink every possible scenario to be prepared for “the worst” as I would call it. My main concern was, will I be able to take the exam on time? If something changes quickly, will I still be able to meet my application timeline? These were some of the questions that kept me awake at night.
Looking back at my upbringing, I realize that where I grew up wanting to become a physician scientist is not the norm. I grew up in a single-parent household, where finances were always our limiting factor. My mom worked restlessly to sustain my brother and me. However, several times something would happen unexpectedly, and my mom struggled to make ends meet. Thankfully, in those moments a family member would step in and help us. For instance, one time our fridge stopped working after several power outages in the island. My mom could not afford to buy a new one but my aunt, who was like a second mother to me, gifted her a new fridge. This can be seen as a glimpse of what URiM (underrepresented in medicine) pre-meds struggle within their personal lives. Navigating these complex situations adds an extra burden to the usual complications in the life of a student. Hence the need of many URiM pre-meds to look for paid opportunities in which they can support themselves and their families.
In my case, when I was an undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao I landed my first paid research assistant opportunity, where I could learn and do science while also relieve my mother of additional financial burden. After graduating college, I still needed additional research experiences to be competitive enough to land an MSTP position at an institution in the States, yet opportunities in my field of interest there were paid, are far and few in between. I was privileged to find work as research technologist at John Hopkins University, where I was paid a full-time salary and allowed some time to pursue my research interest. Working a full-time job has been critical financial relief for my family, but it has come with costs. As a pre-medical student, who must still engage in scholarly activity, publish, conference presentations and attendance, working a full-time job while doing research on the side, is unfortunately not sustainable. For URiM pre-medical students like me, research has shown disadvantages due to a lack of social, cultural, and financial capital (1). Among the social disadvantages, research opportunities are the most common. URiM students are less likely to have significant research experience that their counterpart applicants. In this context, the students seek preferably for paid opportunities to become more competitive applicants when applying to medical school.
Moreover, during the COVID-19 pandemic I struggled to get in-person opportunities for shadowing, clinical, and non-clinical volunteering. In person opportunities were non-existent for new volunteers because of the risk of getting COVID-19. For example, when I moved, I searched for clinical shadowing volunteering opportunities near campus, but none were available. I was stressed because I wanted to engage in these opportunities to strengthen my application but there were none. However, I understood that other students would probably experience the same difficulties to pursue these activities as the pandemic was impacting us all. Under those circumstances I constantly needed to remind myself that I was doing my best under the conditions that I was in.
Early on, I lacked role models and mentors who were physician or physician-scientists. It was not until I connected with other Latina physicians and physician-scientists through Twitter (#MedTwitter) that I had the chance to learn from others who shared a similar background. Connecting through social media allowed me to collaborate on research projects and establish ties with Latina mentors that have supported me during the application cycle. One way to support URiM students would be to generate funded virtual research opportunities where students can be paired with a researcher and develop their own project. The support and mentorship component of such interaction can make a humongous difference in the student’s journey. The path to become a physician-scientist is long and often compared to running a marathon. I invite you, if you have the opportunity, to make a difference by supporting URiM students pursuing the physician-scientist track so that they can successfully make it to the finish line.
References:
1. Christophers, B., Macedo, B., Nieblas-Bedolla, E. et al. First-generation physician scientists are under-represented and need better support. Nat Med 27, 752–755 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01352-3
About the Author: Yaniris Molina Aponte is a research technologist and laboratory manager at the Johns Hopkins University. She obtained her bachelor of science at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao, where she majored in biology and minored in chemistry. Her interests include health disparities, immunology, oncology, and mentoring underrepresented minorities in STEM. During her spare time she enjoys running, hiking, reading books, and writing poetry.