It's Difficult, Not Impossible

Picking up the phone and making calls to professionals in your dream career is surreal yet extremely daunting. Sometimes things don't go as planned, but there would be no challenges if everything came easy.

Weekly Report 10/09/2017- 10/15/2017

Picking up the phone to call a professional and emailing professionals with the daunting task of making a good first impression has been some of the most difficult tasks. This past week was another week of cold calling and attempting to get interviews. Although it is quite upsetting to call around twenty-five health professionals and being redirected to multiple people only to leave another voicemail, the only option at this point is to say persistent. Since cold calling isn't necessarily going as planned, the next step will most likely be to email professionals especially in areas of UT Southwestern or using the emails provided by professionals during calls. The goal is to at least get some responses through emails in order to set up interviews as soon as possible. So far the biggest challenge has been actually speaking to someone who comes in direct contact with the doctor. Most of the calls get forwarded to a medical assistant or a personal assistant and with the doctors being neurosurgeons, many of them rarely have time to return calls. Calling has been difficult as I've tried smiling, using different "scripted" ways of talking, and attempting to stay as enthusiastic as possible regardless of all the rejections. Thus, this following week I will attempt to email professionals and hopefully get responses from a few in order to set up interviews as soon as possible.

The primary motivation that has driven me to stay persistent in the end result. As of right now I have contacted prior ISM students in order to possibly obtain some contacts that I may or may not already have. In addition, contacting my research professor has been another outlet towards obtaining contacts. Thus, as of now it's all the matter of calling and attempting to get interviews through every outlet possible

On the other hand, this week was also spent learning an ample amount of information on the educational aspects of neurosurgery and the educational steps towards going to neurosurgical schools. Through this I learned that medical schooling can take anywhere from twelve to fourteen years with six years of schooling in addition to the four years of medical school and seventy-two months of residency in a specialty. The specialists also differed from spinal specialties to epilepsies or brain specialties. This gave large insight into the difficulties that would be present and the opportunities present to invest our lives into helping the progression of the cures of brain diseases.

Every success comes with multiple obstacles and it really opens up your eyes to realize how difficult it is to get in contact with professionals in the real world. However, the motto in life to love by is “never give up” and those that don't give up are capable of getting far. Thus, my motivation is to keep trying until I get my interviews and work towards obtaining a mentor as soon as possible.