Sink or Swim Podcast · Sink or Swim Podcast

A Letter To My Younger Self

·51 min·3 clips

A spin class led to rhabdomyolysis, an ambulance, and a week in the hospital.

1. Sink or Swim Podcast’s “A Letter To My Younger Self” centers on three NSUMD fourth-year medical students reflecting on medicine, specialty choice, and the route to graduation. 2. Tashiz hosts with Katie and Maria, both fourth-year med students at NSUMD, and their roles matter because each brings a different path into medicine. 3. The episode asks what each speaker would tell a younger self and why their own medical-school journeys shaped those answers. 4. Tashiz says her path began in Haiti, where hospital experiences and seeing sick patients “with no hope” pushed her toward medicine. 5. Katie says she “can’t remember a time” she did not want medicine, then ties that early interest to seeing doctors who looked like her. 6. Maria says a broken left arm at age five or six introduced her to x-rays and shifted her view of what medicine could be. 7. Tashiz describes a long route through biomedical sciences, Quest Diagnostics, an interventional radiologist’s office, an MCAT period, and a second bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology. 8. Maria says she studied in Columbia until age 10, graduated from the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition, and had to navigate college without family members who spoke English. 9. Katie says she started in biomedical sciences, switched to health sciences pre-clinical, graduated with a science GPA of 2.8 and an overall GPA around 3.3, then taught high school for four years before applying during the COVID pandemic. 10. Specialty choices are discussed in detail, with Maria choosing diagnostic radiology, another speaker choosing internal medicine, and Katie planning on OBGYN. 11. Maria says diagnostic radiology began with childhood fear of hospitals, then changed when an x-ray of her arm showed that imaging was part of medicine. 12. The internal medicine discussion mentions family medicine scribing, adult medicine, and a preference for treating patients in a more acute setting while keeping a holistic view. 13. Katie says OBGYN felt right after an OB rotation because the field combines outpatient continuity, surgery, and hospital-based emergencies. 14. Katie’s most memorable OB story is a delivery that turned into a massive postpartum hemorrhage after a healthy baby was born. 15. She says the preceptor emphasized being “one step ahead” because pregnancy changes normal bleeding signs and symptoms. 16. The conversation also compares misconceptions about medical school, including fears of being in class all day and assumptions that every rotation includes 24-hour shifts. 17. The tone stays conversational and peer-to-peer, with the three speakers interrupting, laughing, and referencing shared experiences like interviews and class schedules. 18. The format feels like a guided roundtable, moving from personal history to specialty decisions to advice for first-year students. 19. People considering medical school, gap years, or specialty choice would get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a highly technical or research-heavy discussion should probably skip it.

As heard by us

A candid med-school check-in about why the path matters.

Three fourth-year med students use a simple prompt about their younger selves to trace why they chose medicine, what training has taken from them, and what it has taught them about the wider care team.

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Why you'd press play

You want the honest med-school version, not the polished one.

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