Map of My Life

hi and Brandy Ostroff.

I'm a incoming m one, and this is the nap

in my life.

Of course, we have to start at the very beginning.

So I was born on June 12 1987 in Akron,

Ohio, is a picture of me obviously laying in the

basement with my dad watching sports.

I'm sure you can find me in a very similar

position nowadays.

When I was in preschool and throughout my life, my

mom worked a lot in hospitals as a dietitian, and

so she was working at the time I was in

preschool. Akron City Hospital.

That's the hospital is actually born into as well.

Me on the left.

Little preschool Me, Ah, loved watching the medical helicopters that

came into the Level One trauma center there at Akron

City Hospital.

They would come in multiple times a day, was always

running to the fence, super fascinated and wondering what what

was the hullabaloo about it?

Definitely the signs of a burgeoning doctor, I would say

Yes. I had a lot of exposure to medicine more

in the E.

NT side.

I had a bunch of ear infections when I was

a kid.

Ventilation tubes the works.

Me wearing this very attractive headband, always when I was

swimming. Ah.

Luckily, those surgeries were all successes.

I just was left with a scar on my left

ear and ah, very weird ear canal, according to my

e nt.

So some fun facts about me.

I grew up a lot in Ohio, specifically, cargo falls.

But my just a job change with my family led

us to reconsider where we're gonna live.

And so my grandparents were living in North Carolina at

the time.

And so we moved in the summer of 2004 to

be closer to them.

Even though I was born in Ohio.

I definitely still to this day consider North Carolina my

home. I love living here and still do the area

of North Carolina that we moved to is right in

your Pinehurst and is a big golfing area.

So this is Ah, it was a no brainer for

my parents to start my sister and I into a

golf program and get a started there.

So this is the first tee, this Angelus, which is

the program that we started.

It's kind of Ah, I always equate the first tee

Teoh boy or Girl Scouts for golf, different levels, life,

schools, curriculum.

So we started in 2000 for and I continued all

the way up until they kicked me out when I

graduated high school.

Ah, and so I did a bunch of experiences with

them. Amazing lifelong experiences that will hold.

Um, but the biggest one was working in Pebble Beach.

Ah, and so this is an event that they had

out there.

I was playing with the Champions Tour.

Still one of my favorite memories of all time.

I went to a very rule high school, uh, loved

my peers, but there was not a lot of that

first thought or diversity of opinion.

In the summer before my senior year of high school,

I went to governor school in attended for natural Science

is the first time I met other students who were

very similar to me.

An academic focus and had a lot of cool opinions

and ideas.

Definitely set me up.

I think, to go to a liberal arts school and

definitely to explore a little bit more about myself and

who I am as a person, as I said, Ah,

Governor school definitely up in my mind to going to

a liberal arts school.

And so when W.

Nell offered me a scholarship, I jumped at it.

So going to Washington and Leah was something that I

never really had on my radar until it was, um

and I didn't know a ton about the school until

I got there and learned a little bit more about

its history.

Definitely is a history that I think is important to

explore nowadays, which I think they're doing.

Ah, and so we'll see over the next few months

in the next few years how the administration does with

that history, which I think is gonna be important.

But I learned a lot about that school as well

as myself.

So that first year on campus there w no, I

came to terms with a big part of them about

myself, which was that I that I'm gay.

And so it was Ah, big moment that that summer

after my freshman year, to come out to my family.

But luckily ah, they were super supportive.

Ah, I definitely I'm very grateful to have the support

system that I have to this day, and I wouldn't

be in the position that I am without them.

So I definitely am a lucky one in terms of

that. And I hope that, um, I can support others

in the very similar way.

Being gay, I think, is an important aspect of missing

myself. I don't think it colors everything that I do,

but I definitely it'll be something that I will use

a tool in the practice of my medicine.

And then, you know, I worked a lot with the

Shepherd Poverty Studies program.

It was an interdisciplinary program that did a lot of

different community outreach programs and academic work.

So one of the things I did was working with

Head Start, which was a preschool program for low income

students. I definitely still want to consider doing something similar

to that, and it really opened my eyes to my

love for working with kids and hopefully working in pediatrics.

We have to do internship with the minor for poverty

studies which I did.

Ah, and my interest in global health led me to

go to Cusco, Peru, and work at a clinic there.

Definitely a lot of lessons that I gained and how

you can manage cultural values in creating diagnosis and treatment

for a very diverse patient population.

Ah, we all have to do a capstone project for

the minor.

Mine was working on modern HIV prevention specifically in prep,

in disparities that there's have, um, in an already kind

of disparity ridden disease.

So, um, definitely I would like to explore this little

bit more.

Um, and I've more deep into solutions rather than just

doing basic research on how we can correct the race

disparity and prep uptake.

I mean, the summer doesn't 18.

I worked at the N i H actually, and this

is the first time I did a lot of bench

research in terms of more of a clinical aspect in

translational aspect.

Ah, working in the porter lab with this dark internship,

which was, ah, group that was set up by a

family that sponsored students from Washington lead to go help

find cures for NPC one, which is ah, very rare

but debilitating neurological disease and kids.

Um, I found that I loved being my neuron Gardner.

So these are my little neurons that I would take

care of every day in a dish.

Uh, I loved working with the people in the lab,

but a lot of the work was isolating.

I was working independently a lot of the time at

a bench or in the so called to room for

hours on end without talking to people are interacting with

others. I found that the clinical aspect interacting with a

patient every day is something that I really feed off

of and energizes me.

So while I loved what I was doing from kind

of a just a standpoint of knowledge and gaining insight

into this disease, I definitely wanna have the clinical aspect

of medicine at the forefront of my career.

I'm in 2018 and graduated from Washington only, um, with

my bachelor's of science.

This is a great day that I got to share

with my family.

Ah, and I am very proud of myself for getting

through. Ah, very challenging course of study for sure.

Right after graduation, I didn't go straight into medical school,

but I took a gap year and I worked at

the U.

V, a Center for Diabetes Technology, where we did clinical

trials specifically on this new technology that they entitled diess,

which is more of a closed loop where they put

the insulin pump Ah, phone app and a continuous glucose

monitor in a close look together and hopefully have the

type one diabetic patient be more control of their insulin

levels and have the guesswork be eliminated more So So

we're working on ah clinical tropical apex That added an

exercise component to this system, which is very cool.

This was kind of building on my work at the

n i h where I saw that Oh yes, I

actually really do love working with patients.

I do still love the research aspect and investigative aspect

of research.

But having the patients being the center of my research

is definitely something I love.

Ah, and so definitely also injured opened my eyes more

to my left for endocrinology and something that I'm thinking

of maybe continuing on having is an interest going into

medical school and that leads us here to where we

are today at Guy Singer, Commonweal School of Medicine.

And I'm very excited to meet all of you and

start my journey here.

Um, I will be a primary care scholar here, so

hopefully that all my my journeys will help coalesce and

help the people here in Northeast Pennsylvania while I work,

Uh, after residency.

So I'm very excited.

Meet all of you.

Um, and yet thanks.

Map of My Life

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