{"id":8333,"date":"2017-05-30T13:29:49","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T17:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/?p=8333"},"modified":"2017-06-07T11:25:08","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T15:25:08","slug":"student-spotlight-catherine-gordon-20-a-strong-sense-of-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/2017\/student-spotlight-catherine-gordon-20-a-strong-sense-of-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Spotlight\u2014Catherine Gordon \u201920: A Strong Sense of Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI did feel tempted to go farther away, but I love this area and the people who live here,\u201d says first-year medical student Catherine Gordon. \u201cWhy would I leave for the sake of leaving?<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that was important to me when choosing a medical school was a place that highly valued balance\u2014work\/life balance and self-care. The students and faculty I met at Geisel have a really good perspective on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gordon grew up in Norwich, VT, and like most people in the Upper Valley she lives a balanced life: volunteering at local community service organizations, indulging in creative pursuits, and spending a good deal of time outdoors. \u201cI love winter and skiing, so this is a great place to be. And growing up in this community\u2014a place where people truly care about each other\u2014was wonderful. I felt that I was very well looked after,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is a community that also emphasizes service, and that had a big influence me as I thought about college and what I wanted to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

While a regard for medicine hovered in the background, Gordon pursued her interests in environmental health, policies around climate change, and environmental management at Middlebury College.<\/p>\n

After an undergraduate semester abroad spent in West Africa studying health care delivery in Mali, Gordon became interested in global health and health care disparities, but gave no thought to becoming a physician.<\/p>\n

Gordon knew she wanted to be involved in furthering health, but didn\u2019t know at what level it would be\u2014population, community, or individual. But the more she explored and learned, she decided going to medical school and becoming a physician would give her the flexibility to affect health on multiple levels\u2014not only to advocate for individual patients, but to also be an advocate for the community in being able to do community-based research that further promotes health.<\/p>\n

\u201cI still wasn\u2019t sure which direction I wanted to go,\u201d she says. \u201cAs I was trying to figure out my major I discovered there was a lot of overlap between population health, geography, and the availability of resources such as clean water\u2014I felt these weren\u2019t mutually exclusive areas of study, but I had to make a decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

She chose population health and environmental health because she thought it would make her a better care provider in one-on-one interactions with patients if she decide on medical school, and would give her a holistic understanding of her patients\u2019 lives in terms of where they lived and the challenges their communities face\u2014people don\u2019t live in vacuums, communities are interconnected systems, she notes.<\/p>\n

With public and environmental health under her belt Gordon realized she also needed clinical experience, so she pursued a clinical research job after college in an emergency medicine department in Boston where she rubbed shoulders with a variety of health care providers and talked to patients and their families.<\/p>\n

This, coupled with her experience in Mali, convinced Gordon medicine was the right choice for her and she happily returned to the Upper Valley to attend Geisel School of Medicine. \u201cThere are so many awesome resources here at Dartmouth\u2014I love it,\u201d Gordon enthusiastically says.<\/p>\n

Gordon is an avid crafter and now that she is back in Hanover\u2014she graduated from Hanover High School\u2014she has been indulging her creative impulses, compliments of Dartmouth\u2019s many offerings. An amateur silversmith, she designed and made wedding rings for her father and stepmother; created a wedding guest book, in the book arts studio, for her mother\u2019s upcoming nuptials; and is spending time in Dartmouth\u2019s pottery studio making a variety of small vessels.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\"I do enjoy crafts\u2014if I couldn\u2019t be a doctor I\u2019d be a craftsperson,\u201d says Catherine Gordon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cSeveral of my classmates have been going to the woodshop and I\u2019d like to try that as well. I do enjoy crafts\u2014if I couldn\u2019t be a doctor I\u2019d be a craftsperson,\u201d she confesses. \u201cThere are so many things to explore and so little time.\u201d<\/p>\n

For some, the heavy workload of a first-year medical student precludes them from participating in a variety of creative pursuits, which on the surface may appear to be a waste of valuable time\u2014something to which Gordon has given some thought. \u201cOften it\u2019s hard to shift from studying to being with friends or doing anything else without thinking about studying or reviewing anatomy terms in your mind, and not being present,\u201d she says. \u201cBut for me, creative activity requires focus, which forces you to be present.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen making pottery you really have to focus on what you are doing and that\u2019s what\u2019s so nice about it\u2014I can\u2019t center a piece of clay while thinking about studying. And the most beneficial thing about that is I\u2019m more energized when I get back to studying. That\u2019s the awesome thing about crafts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Considering medicine is as much an art as a science, being focused and present is good training for aspiring physicians. For Gordon, this connection to the arts along with peer support, compassion, and cultural humility is what makes Geisel strong, and it\u2019s something that\u2019s important to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I am happy to be here,\u201d she says. \u201cMy classmates and I are all busy, but we are going through this together\u2014I can\u2019t imagine going through medical school without the support of your peers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Influenced by her deep Upper Valley roots, Catherine Gordon understands the connection between geography and population health\u2014an interconnection she thinks will help explain the challenges facing her future patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":8342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,1],"tags":[409,43,257],"class_list":["post-8333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-news","tag-medical-student","tag-population-health","tag-student-spotlight","author-12"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/05\/gordon-web3.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4r3h1-2ap","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8333"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8337,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8333\/revisions\/8337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geiselmed.dartmouth.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}