I, Oviya Ragupathi, am a rising senior at Stanton College Preparatory School and participated in the AnnieRuth Summer Internship during the summer of my junior year. Throughout the school year, I attended monthly TEAMS meetings on Saturday during which I gained invaluable experience and knowledge about interacting with the community and the workplace. Due to my commitment to the program and accumulation of the necessary points, I was awarded as a Summer Internship Award Recipient.
As an aspiring neurosurgeon, I spent the course of the six-week internship shadowing doctors in various medical specialties. During the first two weeks of my internship, I shadowed Dr. Price, a nephrologist, and Dr. Bennett, a family medicine physician. Through this experience, I gained invaluable knowledge about both fields of medicine as well as learned how doctors interact with their patients. Following this, I interned at Baptist’s Lyerly Neurosurgery department. During my time there, I learned about the relationship between strokes and hereditary genes through the research team, and shadowed doctors in ORs. I also learned valuable information about strokes, AVMs, and other neurological disorders.
Overall, my experience as an intern through the AnnieRuth Summer Internship Program was very valuable and a great experience. Not only did I learn about the field I was interested in, neurosurgery, I was also exposed to other fields within medicine, keeping me open-minded.