Ritualized Academic Hazing (aka the NIH training)

As a quick background, we (Jenni and Miranda) were both selected as Fogarty International Clinical Research Scholars for 2009 - 2010, and we were both placed in Lima, Peru. The FICRS program is for roughly 35 health professions graduate students from the United States. It is a program to train students in global health clinical research. The vast majority of scholars are third year medical students, but there are a handful of epidemiology doctoral students, one dental student, and two vets (us!). Miranda is a third year DVM/MPH student at Tufts University. Jenni already completed here DVM at Tufts, and is now pursuing more letters behind her name, as a PhD candidate in epidemiology at Cornell. Each student from the States is paired with a "twin" from the country we are going to be working in. Miranda's twin is Bruno, a veterinarian from Lima who studies (among other subjects) bird flu in wild birds; Jenni's twin is Jose, an expert in tuberculosis.

We're pretty thrilled to have been chosen for this program! We are both interested in pursuing careers abroad, and specifically on investigating the way that animal health (both in wild and domestic animals) impacts both human health and human livelihood. This field of veterinary public health ranges from bird flu to food security to wildlife conservation. Being part of this program will give us a fantastic opportunity to develop great research skills, and to be initiated into the global health world.

All of the American and International Scholars traveled to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD for two weeks in early July. We were also joined by post-doc fellows who are already have established research programs in developing countries. For these two weeks, we attended lectures from experts in the field, had plenty of opportunity to get to know our peers, and slept for approximately 4 hours a night.... The lectures were great, though certainly overwhelming, lasting roughly 8 hours a day! As a veterinary student, I don't have much of a background in HIV and other STD research, and so these two weeks were a fairly steep learning curve.

The best part of the experience, however, was to get to know our peers, both the Americans and our international twins alike! This was an exceptionally smart group of people, certainly this group will be playing a major role in addressing the health issues that plague the developing world! However, aside from being smart and savvy, this was a group of genuinely interesting, compassionate, and friendly people. Never before have I been in such a large group of people, all of whom I felt were really fantastic individuals!

Tales of debauchery will not be shared here, but trust that we managed to have lots of fun getting to know the people will we working with (for instance, there are roughly 12 of us working in Peru). We managed to eat our way through our per diems with no trouble, we toured around Washington DC, and we even stalked the Real World house!

Now, I have traveled on to Seattle for more intense HIV/STD training, and Jenni has returned home to pack! More to come!