BLOGS

Starting off the year with the right foot, in ISM we began to connect with everyone and get to know each other. By starting with fun icebreakers and “get to know me” activities, I was able to learn a lot about the other students that I will be spending the rest of the year with and Coach Goff who is an amazing ISM teacher and life mentor. Over the course of this week, I have been served with the load that is yet to come this year, but instead of being upset, I am excited and ready to get started. Unlike any of my other classes, this class allows me to be creative and do work pertaining to what I want to in the future. As a class we took a deep dive into the world of professionalism by creating our own Linkedin accounts with all our achievements and a digital portfolio that will be used throughout the year to showcase our learning. We were able to connect with our peers and get an insight of how it will be to find a mentor. I want to get right into finding a mentor and doing interviews. I am very excited to start my path into the dermatology field. I have learned that this class is a good amount of work and I must work to stay on top of it all, but in the end it will all be worth it because I am doing what I enjoy.

As we further our journey in ISM, this week we were introduced to our first major grade. Our task was to annotate a passage that you find interesting pertaining to your field of study and write a 500 word assessment of how it connects to your field, what I think of it, if I agree or disagree with it, and more. This was different from what I was first expecting because I went into this assignment thinking I would just summarize the passage I found and it would be an easy 100. I was proven wrong when I read the direction and learned that it was more than a summary. Coach Goff had reiterated in class that these assignments are for my own learning of what career that I want to pursue in the future. This made me think of why I am in ISM and my main goal to achieve this year. My goal is to learn more about the profession I have chosen and solidify if I actually enjoy it and what to pursue in the future.The obstacles I faced for this assignment were that I was so used to doing work for grades and for the teacher. I had to change my way of thinking for this assignment by remembering as I was writing that it was my own knowledge and understanding of dermatology.

We finally began our search this week for the professional who will be guiding us through our preferred field of study. With my completed Linkedin with all my accomplishments and goals, I began to connect with people in my area who work in dermatology. I ran into some complications with how to connect with people and how to make my first impression. I figured it out with the help of Coach Goff telling me that the first impression is very important. The impression you make on someone will last a lifetime. If you make a bad impression it is way harder to reverse the reprimands than to put in the extra effort to make sure the person you are trying to impress is interested. This can fit into many contexts, but for ISM this means the way you present yourself in the business world will stick with you until you retire. People have connections to more people and by having a good impression on one person, it can lead you to having more opportunities in the future. As I was looking for professionals to connect with, I kept this in mind when adding my introductory note. I will be continuing to contact more professionals and grow my connections going forward into the next week.

This past week in ISM has been a constant cycle of requesting, connecting, and messaging professionals through Linkedin. When I decided to join ISM at the end of my sophomore year, I did not expect the process of booking interviews and finding professionals to be so tedious. This past week I have definitely learned that professionals especially in the health field are constantly busy. I am continuing to send messages and contact dermatologists in my area in hopes one will respond in the near future. This has definitely been a learning experience for me because I have been playing the waiting game and praying someone responds. This has taught me that in the professional world, patience is key to making connections. Many people are extremely busy with work, family, and more. Being a junior in multiple AP and high level courses, I feel the pressures of a hefty schedule and working diligently to finish everything that has to be done. Finding time to respond to others, especially as an adult with a career, it must  be difficult to keep up with everything. Being patient and treating professionals with respect and consideration will take me far in the business world because it will show that I am willing to set time aside for aspirations and connections that I am determined to achieve.

For the past couple weeks, I have been sending back to back messages to professionals in the dermatology field awaiting a response. Linkedin has been my best friend for finding connections, but with the help of a fellow classmate, I was able to find a more effective way of contacting derms in my area. I was told that through UT Southwestern’s website, there are lists of medical professors in the field of your choice that you can contact. I was able to send emails to about ten derms in my area, and the results were faster and more efficient than Linkedin. This week, I have had three professionals reach back out to me, approving my request for an interview. I am now in the process of scheduling these interviews over zoom or in person. I am beyond excited to meet with these professionals and get their own personal story through dermatology. I am interested in knowing what they feel the most rewarding parts of their career are and what advice they can give me for my future aspirations in cosmetic dermatology. This week we also were given the assignment to propose what we plan on researching for the entirety of this year. With the help of research assignments, I was able to narrow down what parts of dermatology I was really interested in and wanted to do in the future. In the future, I want to be a cosmetic dermatologist and focus my attention more on clients who come to my practicing center for esthetic purposes. The idea of being able to change the way one views themself and positively impact their confidence makes me excited to keep learning more and gaining more experience.

By the end of the year in ISM, we must be able to compose our own original work pertaining to our specialized field and present it to fellow ISM students. The original work varies from student to student. It is your very own project that you propose, research, and create on your own. For my original work this year in ISM, I plan to create my own makeup product that includes ingredients that help your skin like skincare products instead of clogging your pores and making your skin worse like other makeup products do. I will use the information that I will gain from shadowing a dermatologist to get input on the chemicals that are proven to help one’s skin. Taking this information, I will combine it with the information I will learn from a cosmetic chemist that creates makeup to configure my own makeup that is made up of ingredients that will make one’s epidermis better looking while wearing my product and even after taking it off.  I want my product to reduce acne, unclog pores, reduce inflammation, and lessen the appearance of wrinkles. Using the results of this product, I will use the information to make recommendations to makeup brands that are known to damage people’s skin with prolonged and continuous wear. I hope that I am able to live up to my proposal with the help from my mentor and any other professionals in neighboring fields that could aid me in accomplishing this product. I hope to learn many skills from this journey with the obvious trial and error that comes with it.

This week we had the opportunity to meet with professionals and ISM alumni at the Business Symposium. With different stations set up for different purposes, we were given the chance to network, ask questions, and listen to intellectuals who have experience and expertise. I was able to learn a lot about the processes of getting into one’s desired field of work. The professionals gave advice such as creating as many business connections as possible is beneficial because they will aid us in the future. Starting professional relationships at an early standpoint such as in highschool will give us students leverage in college and after college by giving us opportunities for internships, projects, and possible job outlook. This made me realize that being part of ISM is a privilege and I should take advantage of it as much as possible. The ISM class allows me to be able to focus on my own future career goals with fellow students who share the same hardworking skills and determination as me. I also learned that one can have multiple approaches to their dream career. Before the business symposium, I wasn’t sure what would happen if I ever felt no longer interested in my field of study. The professionals shared their experiences with switching majors and switching their interests. Many of them started their ISM journey with a different field of study than the one they are currently employed in now. I was able to take away that everyone faces obstacles in their lives and it is our job to navigate around them. There is not just one straight and easy route to achieving your goals. Just because one person did it that way, does not mean that you should completely give up if something goes wrong. This advice really helped me as an indecisive individual because it made me realize that in the end all that matters is that I am enjoying what I am doing and making meaningful connections. 

This week I had the honor of interviewing a board certified dermatologist at UT Southwestern, Rajiv Nijhawan, who specializes in surgical management of skin cancers as well as reconstructive surgeries. Because I am still in the process of learning all about the different fields within the large and growing field of dermatology, I went forward with this interview in hopes to learn more about the surgical and more medical side of dermatology. Dr. Nijhawan informed me that his day to day schedule is always something different. He explained that he sees about 10 to 15 patients each day and no day is similar to the day before. He says that his job is truly rewarding and the hard work he put in most definitely paid off in the end. When asked what specifically his specialized field in dermatology does, he explained that he works with people who have skin cancer and he works to take out the tumors, or cancer cells, then reconstruct the area. He said that this includes even a cosmetic aspect with the reconstructing part. Dr. Nijhawan specializes with the Mohs treatment which is a procedure done by surgical dermatologists, like him, to remove skin cancers where 100 percent of the margin is checked to achieve the highest cure rates and to preserve as much normal skin as possible. This was really interesting to me because I was able to learn more about the specific procedures that he conducts everyday. I will definitely be looking more into this treatment and doing more research on it because this might be something that I want to specialize in, in the future. With conducting this interview, I was able to really learn the other side of dermatology that I have not been researching as much. This interview gave me insight into the surgical aspect and oncology aspect of dermatology that I was ignoring before because I was set on wanting to be a cosmetic dermatologist.

This week I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Kim Yancey, professor and chair of the Department of Dermatology at UT Southwestern Medical Center. As a prerequisite for this interview, I came up with questions that directly correlate with the field of dermatology and specifically what his day to day job entails. With research before the interview, I learned that Dr. Yancey does a majority of his work in the oncological and surgical fields of dermatology. Dr. Yancey explained to me that his journey through the field of dermatology included many different perspectives. He began his career as a practitioner and regularly worked with patients seeking his care and care from the other dermatologists working alongside him. In this point of his career, he was a part of many different research conductions and he conducted some research projects himself too. His study involved the characterization of that protein and they were able to really show that that protein was targeted by an immune response by those patients with a rare blistering disease. They were also able to discover that the gene in the coding of that protein was mutated in patients with a very rare inherited blistering disease, so the need to require the abnormalities in that protein resulted in a blistering skin phenotype. Dr. Yancey explained that through their research and studies, he learned that science and engineering in dermatology is a team effort and having good connections with your fellow colleagues is important in the business world. I was able to connect this back to what I learned at the ISM business symposium from the professionals presenting.I was able to learn from this experience that going through the dermatology career field has many different outcomes. I should keep an open mind because I will never know where I will end up. I could be interested in being in the business side of dermatology in the future or even the administrative side. I will apply this to my research in ISM this year by doing research on the surgical and oncological aspects of dermatology.

This week I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Arturo Dominguez, Associate Professor in the Department of Dermatology and the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center. I was able to receive a ton of influential advice from this interview but a key takeaway that I got from this was that choosing your path can be tough and time consuming but an important piece of advice given from Dr.Dominguez was that we should focus on trying to bring something new to the plate. He informed me that dermatology is a fast growing field that is very competitive. He explained that to be an influential dermatologist, I should focus on expanding my knowledge, especially in college, so that in medical school I will be able to bring a new perspective to the table that has not been thought of before. This made me realize that dermatology and any medicine related job in fact should not be money driven and seen as just a good occupation for economic benefit and a stable lifestyle. It should be seen as an opportunity to advance our society into the future with new ideas and new lenses for us to look into. . He explains that this is important because these are very important skills in life for developing your mind and ability to think critically which is very important in medicine because doctors are constantly faced with new challenges that they will need to problem solve to achieve a happy and healthy patient. By bringing in new perspectives and ideas, doctors with different background knowledge can put their information together instead of everyone only knowing the standard levels of biology or chemistry as an example. This piece of advice was very surprising to me because I had always thought that if you choose the pre-medical route in college you had to major in biology, chemistry, or physics. I learned that you are able to major in anything as long as you take the prerequisites for medical school and that it is actually recommended to take part in classes you actually find an interest in.