Medical Student Interview

My goal is to attend medical school, so I though it best to interview a student who was recently accepted into medical school.  I interviewed my long-time friend, Angela Massoud, who will be attending medical school at Ohio University.  I was mostly interested in the application process and what I need to do to prepare myself to be a competitive applicant.  First, she stressed the importance of keeping a high GPA, particularly a high science GPA.  Currently, I am on a good track to be competitive, but I will continue to push myself to be an outstanding applicant.  Second, she encouraged me to take MCAT prep courses so that I can get the best score possible.  She swears by Kaplan, so that is a company that I will definitely be looking into.  Lastly, Angela spoke to how important it is that you be yourself in your interviews.  If that school is a good match for you, everything will work out for the best.  You would not want to be at a school that accepted you because they thought you were something that you are not.  Angela certainly gave me a good deal to think about as I enter my Junior year, and I have no doubt that she will continue to be an invaluable resource as I continue my journey to and through medical school.

Second Year Service Project

For my second year service project, I founded and served with Ohio Health Aid.  OHA is an innovative and progressive non-profit organization dedicated to improving universal health through preventive medicine, health education, and leadership development. We are striving for a more educated Columbus community willing to adopt a healthy way of living while continuing to promote a beneficial lifestyle. Our signature program is a multi-specialty free health screening that is open to the community.  I particularly contributed to OHA by serving as the Vice President of Finance

While this was no easy task and certainly had its ups and downs, we were able to successfully fund our first screening in January.  At this screening we served 20 patients and had a 100 percent satisfaction rate.  While the volume of patients was not enormous, we are very proud that were able to provide healthcare to those who may otherwise not have had access to it.  Ultimately, Being a part of OHA has been a very rewarding experience and it has been incredible to watch the organization grow from 3 people to over 50 in just one year.  I look forward to next year as I transition into the new position of Chief of Engagement and Professional Development.

Year in Review

After, graduating high school, I knew that I was going to Ohio State, and I knew that I was going to be in the Health Science Scholars program, just as my sister was before me.  However, I did not know much about the program other than the fact that I would be living with my fellow HSS students in one of the nicest dorms on campus.  I honestly did not have too many preconceived notions about the HSS program.  I expected to have more opportunities to participate in health care related activities, and I knew that the program would require me to perform community service.  I found that the community service requirement was one of the things I liked best about the program because it forced me to keep that on my radar which is especially important for a pre-med student.  I liked living with people with similar interests to me, but still had a diverse group of majors.  I especially appreciated this as an engineering major because engineers are not the most social bunch so I liked living with a different group of people.  As I look to my second year in HSS, I hope to be more involved in medicine related activities.  Corresponding with this, I hope that HSS will provide more of these events, and be less focused on putting on events that do not relate to health care.  I believe that if the events were more centered around health care, the students would be more engaged.

It took me a while to find a consistent service project that I was passionate about, but now I have found it and I have not looked back since.  Around November in the first semester, I was approached by one of my friends who is also in HSS, and he asked if I would be interested in helping him start a chapter on Universal Health Aid.  UHA is a nonprofit organization that my friend worked with during high school, and he had a vison of starting a chapter here.  This organization seeks to promote the health of the community through preventative medicine.  This is accomplished by health education and health screening provided for free to the community.  These services are targeted particularly at the low income and under insured population of Columbus.  He, another friend and I worked many hours just to start making community connections and find an advisor.  Finally, in about March this year, we found an advisor and began the process of recruiting members and registering ourselves as a student organization.  We held several information sessions and these were pretty successful.  We had good turnout and many people filled out an application for a leadership position.  In the coming days, we will look to fill the remainder of our executive board.  I am serving as Vice President of Finance, and thus I am in charge of all the budgeting and fundraising for the organization.  This is something that I have little experience in, however, I believe that I can learn it quickly, and it will be a good skill for me to have in the future.

Do

Early into this semester, several guys from my floor and I were heading to the RPAC to play some basketball.  However, when we got there, all the courts were taken.  Not wanting to wait, we began to look for another option.  My roommate suggested racquetball because it was one of the sports he would play with his dad back home.  We all agreed to give it a try, and since then, we have all been hooked.  Friendly rivalries were forged and competitiveness ran high.  Now that we all are acquainted with the sport, it is one of our favorite things to do, especially on weekends.  Now, instead of heading to the RPAC to play basketball, we look forward to some good, competitive games of racquetball.

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Go

One of my friend’s birthday was over winter break, so when we all got back to campus for spring semester, we decided to go to an escape room.  We ventured downtown one weekend to the “Trapped in a Room with a Zombie” escape room to see if we could get out.  The six of us who went were paired with four strangers and into the room we went.  It was nerve-wrecking at first because upon entering, the zombie was no where to be found.  The zombie was hiding in a cabinet, and once it was open the zombie came out.  Every 5 minutes, the zombie got another foot of chain, and if the zombie touched you, you were out.  We had an hour to escape, and it was certainly an interesting hour.  We learned early on that communication and teamwork were key.  With 1:45 left, we all escaped and celebrated with a dinner at the nearby Spaghetti Warehouse.

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Eat

One thing that I have tried until recently is Indian food.  I love trying new food, and when several of my Indian friends suggested that we go get Indian food, I was all in.  We decided to go to Mughal Darbar on High Street.  On the walk over, my friends describes the multitude of flavors and debated what to order. We decided to get a varety of dishes and split them between the four of us.  We ordered tandoori chicken, saag panir, samosas, garlic naan, and chicken masala (my favorite and pictured below).  We, of course, asked for the food to be extra spicy in order to get a more authentic taste.  All of the main dishes were eaten with rice or the naan, and to eat properly, one must eat using only their right hand and no utensils.  We also got an extensive lesson in Indian weddings from our friends.  I have gone back several times to eat more of this food, and this first experience with it was certainly rewarding.

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About Me

My name is Scott Stuckey, and I am a first year biomedical engineering major.  I have always been interested in how things work, both mechanical devices and the human body, therefore, I feel this major suits me well.  I am also an extremely visual and kinesthetic learner and I look forward to entering more engineering specific classes because they will be geared (pun intended) toward those types of learning.  Mastering material is my foremost focus in college so that I may become the best engineer and learner that I can be.  My goal after obtaining a bachelors degree is to attend medical school and become a surgeon.  I believe that I will be very successful in this field because I have always had a talent for the sciences, and I thoroughly enjoy helping people.

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