The Path of a Writer

            “You don’t go to MIT to become a doctor — you go there to become a scientist. Pathology is the best of both world,” my favorite interviewer, also a Massachusetts Institute of Technology alum, told me this during my interview.  I never intended to become a doctor — I went to MIT with the ambitions of directing a lab. At the time, my friends thought I wanted to be a lab manager, and they believed I was selling myself short. However, none of them knew about the world of pathology. I learned in undergraduate to study what I loved, and I ended up with a Bachelors of Science in Writing and a minor in biology.

            I grew up the daughter of a microbiologist. I also grew up with a father pursuing a terminal degree and a mother who waited tables to make ends meet. My parents are first generation immigrants. I chose writing because I watched my mother struggle with English, and I learned from her experiences that the most important way for me to be an advocate was to study writing. Specifically, my degree was digital media studies, which had me using Python to generate poems and slogans. I also built multiple hyper textual books, and I used to retell fairy tales via Tweets. My mother was a librarian in China, and consequently, she knew the value of books. I learned from my parents that knowledge was the only thing truly owned by an individual, and I read voraciously. I also learned from majoring in something non-technical at a technical school to pursue what you love.

            My favorite word at 2 was “biofilm,” and I used to shout out “BIOFILM!” whenever anyone asked what my dad did for a living. I have worked in a lab since I was 4; my first job used to be refilling my dad’s  pipette tip jars. This was also my first job as an undergraduate. I completed multiple research projects with Pseudomonas before college and while in college. However, I took a break from this all when tragedy struck. My college sweetheart died the day after I turned in my thesis.

            In the efforts to find myself, I moved back home. I started to pursue the dream my ex had always wanted for me— he always believed that medicine was the destiny I needed to stop avoiding. I have always wondered if the tragedy surrounding my life was because I tried so hard to avoid my destiny. At some point after moving home, I started scribing. I did this for three years, and I realized that medicine was my destiny.

            I found myself in pathology because of my love of art. At some point second year, someone came to speak about path art. She presented the school with a picture of the school’s fountain that was made from a fungal organism that she edited on her computer. It took me back to my undergraduate days at the Broad Institute with all the bioart on their walls. I picked a pathology mentor, and I spent long hours in the gross room. Third year, those hours in the gross room as well as my relationships with the Pathology Assistants helped get through the hard days of medicine.

            While I found pathology and fell in love with it through the anatomic side of it, it is ultimately the fact that I am my father’s daughter that I cannot see myself in any other field. Pseudomonas is my apple pie — it brings back all the wonderful memories of childhood running around my father’s lab. It was through an away rotation that I discovered clinical pathology — specifically clinical microbiology. This is how I can achieve my lifelong goal of being a lab director.

            However, beyond just my love of all things clinical and anatomic, I am also drawn to the world of digital pathology. As I alluded to earlier, my background is such that I know how to program. I have worked on bioinformatics projects handling big data. Python is my favorite language, but I have also worked in other languages such as LISP. I also helped develop a game in undergrad. The future of pathology is digital — and I see myself as someone with the unique background to be one of the leaders of this movement. I went to MIT with the goals of making the world a better place; it is through pathology that I intend to achieve this.

Christine Yu, Marshall University School of Medicine

Christine is an MS4 with a Bachelors of Science in Writing from MIT applying for pathology this year. She grew up in Huntington, WV, which is where she is currently at for medical school at Marshall University. She has diverse interests, and she enjoys painting histopath for fun.

IG: xtinezyu

email: czyu@alum.mit.edu

twitter: pending