InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
A good mentor will be interested in how your upbringing and experiences influence your perception of the world and your decisions. . . . wanting the best for you doesn’t necessarily mean always telling you that everything you are doing is great. . . . Gaining perspective on your role in God’s bigger picture is one of the most valuable outcomes of a healthy mentoring relationship.Read more…
To find a good mentor, it is important to have a strong sense of self. You need to know who you are, and what kind of person you want to become…Both mentor and student need to respect one another’s time, honesty, and commitment to the relationship.Read more…
How can grad students identify good mentors? In this series, we’ll look at 5 characteristics that are useful to look for in a mentor. Keep in mind that it may not be realistic to find a single individual who exhibits all of these characteristics. You might need to look for a group of people . . .Read more…
Name your favorite romantic comedy. What do you like about it? In what ways is it unrealistic about real-life and relationships?Read more…
How do we provide the best possible healthcare for the most people and how do we pay for it?Read more…
In a week when national health care legislation is being substantially revised comes a report on health disparities between rural and urban Americans.Read more…
I’ve consulted Dr. Internet myself, so I figured maybe you have too and you’d want to know about the good doctor’s performance.Read more…
My transition from being an undergraduate to entering graduate school was ambiguous. I simply did not know when or where I was going. Discerning my vocation was a long, but important process that took about three years that started in my junior year of undergrad.Read more…
How do you know where to go to graduate school? How do you choose your field? Kateri Collins shares her experience. Read more…
Robert Browning’s “An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, the Arab Physician” is another fine example of dramatic monologue in which the character speaking reveals things about himself he is unaware of, but through the irony of self-disclosure, the reader readily sees. Read more…
When I finished my post-doctoral research in biochemistry, my career took a turn that was both unexpected and a surprise to my graduate student and post-doc colleagues. I had gone out on faculty interviews at two different universities, expecting to pursue the “traditional” academic route for science Ph.Ds.Read more…
If medicine is about the alleviation of suffering and the postponement of death, is not all of our work ultimately futile? In a society that idolizes success and hides the dying and dead away from full view, what message can physicians give?Read more…
What naming conventions and challenges exist in your field? Where do you need to be sensitive to the concerns of those outside your field when coining a name?Read more…
The stories are heartbreaking, but they are also the substantive content I am seeking. I am collecting stories of pain and injustice. Of course the overriding hope is that these stories can bring about positive change. Yet the fact remains that injustice is a building block of my research project.Read more…
It was stunning news. I listened with disbelief as my colleague described how a patient of ours, in whom we had uncovered a host of serious diseases over a few years, was now newly diagnosed with cancer after an incidental scan.Read more…
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting awayRead more…
Every year, the translator at our pediatric hospital asks this question: What are the four hardest words to translate? He will pause for a moment and then say, Your child is dead. Every time I hear it, I wonder howRead more…
“How can you believe in God and science at the same time?” Even though I am rarely asked this question so plainly, it is often implied in conversation. Many atheistic advocates think that there is a conflict between theRead more…
The work of the Christian Personal Statement, therefore, is not to explain a “unified theory” of our souls, but to construct a message that honors the sovereignty of Christ through the thoughtful alignment of secular goals with our personal beliefs.Read more…
I realized that the real work of writing a Personal Statement was to stop myself from selling myself.Read more…
[This is the second post in a series on becoming a Christian physician. The series began with Do You Want to Be a Doctor?] “Why do you want to work in healthcare?” “I want to help people.” This dialogue isRead more…
“I want to be a doctor. How do I do it?” As a teenager, I was very shy and very awkward. Talking to strangers was a painful and anxiety-laden task, and I didn’t like to talk to strangers any longerRead more…
Today is Match Day. Today, thousands of medical students across the USA will be given a sealed envelope containing a description of where they will be going for residency. At noon, in every medical school, they will gather to simultaneouslyRead more…
One day a number of concerned mothers met with the minister to express their frustration and anger over the unseemly conduct of a particular boy in Sunday School. They did not want their children exposed to this child and fearedRead more…