DMS Alumni Reflections

Being a Dartmouth Medical School student was challenging, but that challenge has led me to be the physician leader that I am. The best stories I have about DMS are the ones my colleagues shared with me. I remember staying up all night cramming for the anatomy final, smelling horrible as we walked in to take the practical, feeling crushed but successful, and throwing out my favorite (now disgusting) sweatshirt. Or another moment - the founding scene of the Dartmouth Dermatones: it was new student week, 1997, as Michael Tomberg, John Bagnol and I canoed on the river. We began to sing. I didn't know them, I wasn't sure why I was singing, but the Dermatones

would come to be a way to share something beyond the workings of the mitochondria with my colleagues.

These moments and many others gave me the ability to learn at the high level Dartmouth demanded of me. So perhaps it was not only the education, but the people who participated in the educational experience with me; helping me grasp cardiac physiology, or just laugh a little, at the process and at myself, that made my experience at DMS so special.

Jennifer A. Daru, MD, DMS '97