Footnotes - Summer 2022 - 23

PODIATRY PROFILES
Adjusting to Life as a
First-Year Student
By Marc Rademaker, AZCPM Class of 2025
It is no small task to jump into the rigorous process
of applying, interviewing, and matriculating
to podiatric medical school. Through taking
prerequisites, studying for the MCAT, and
ultimately deciding the right fit for school, the road
to year one of podiatry school can be a long one -
and that is before even starting the curriculum.
Every school has incoming students of various
ages and stages of life, and yet we all begin day
one on that same level: as first-year students.
This begs the question: how does the adjustment
to professional school vary between these
individuals entering their first year?
Through interviewing two of my classmates, I was
able to learn a little more about how the lifestyle of
becoming a podiatric medical student has evolved
for each of them.
Samantha Berggren and Summer Tran are
both first-year podiatric medical students at the
Arizona College of Podiatric Medicine (AZCPM) at
Midwestern University. Samantha attended college
at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois
and graduated in May of 2021, while Summer
graduated from the University of Texas at Austin
in 2016 and holds a business certificate from
Harvard University.
SAMANTHA: " AFTER WATCHING THE SURGERY
AND INTERACTING WITH THE SURGEON, I WAS
SET ON BEING A PODIATRIC SURGEON "
Samantha found out about podiatry late into
her undergraduate experience. She says,
" I was shadowing an anesthesiologist when he
introduced me to the field of podiatry. He brought
me into a surgery, a hallux amputation due to a
diabetic ulcer. After watching the surgery and
interacting with the surgeon, I was set on being
a podiatric surgeon, " a sentiment regarding first
seeing podiatry in action to which I think many
of us can relate. She decided to pursue podiatry
school immediately following her graduation
from college, with three months off from school.
After spending those months with friends and
family as well as taking advantage of shadowing
opportunities, she started the move from Illinois
to Arizona.
Summer also had a three month hiatus from
school following her college graduation in 2016,
and chose to travel to Vietnam and learn more
about her heritage before beginning a career in
SUMMER 2022
footnotes 23
Footnotes - Summer 2022

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