Guanqun Li

Unique courses I've taken

 

Reader's college and public speaking

      The reader's college gave me brand new perspectives about leadership. When I first came here, I was timid of being a leader because of the new culture and environment. After taking the course, I decided to take some leadership roles on campus. I started with the treasurer of HWS Health Professions Club. I realized as we discussed in class, everyone can be a leader. I felt satisfied and became more active in other leadership roles, such as the coordinator of Geneva Chinese for Kids Program. The public speaking course go with the reader's college. It sharpens my communication skills, which is an important skill, not only for leading, but also for daily conversation.

 

All the sciences

      I am a science person. I took a whole bunch of science courses. Some of them are for pre-med; some are for major requirement. However,  of all of them, particularly am i interested in conducting researches. My main research focuses on Agrobacterium vitis, bacteria that cause crown gall on grape vines. Now I am finishing up my honors. I will continue doing research in medical school, maybe more human body related.

 

Humanity courses

      Being an international student, i am not good at verbal. Therefore, I took some humanity courses to make it up. All of them benefit me a lot. For example, my perspectives changed a lot throughout a course in English, called Stories of Illness and Healing. One area in which my thinking changed a lot is about care. A lot of people ask me one question: why do you come to the US to study medicine rather than staying in China and becoming a medical doctor there. My answer is really simple: I don’t want to practice in that environment where I believe the patient-doctor interaction is not there. Because of the amount of people we have in China, doctors do not have the time to mentally support every patient. So doctors in China are mainly focusing on diagnosing and treating. However, I believe that the mental part is really important (this course also proves this point). Therefore, I was thinking that practice here is a lot better. Doctors care about their patients and they develop a good relationship. Everything seems so ideal until I realized the problems in the health care system after taking this course. First of all, the mental support is still lacking in the medical practice. Therefore, the narrative medicine is really important. In addition, I get to know that illness can be complicated by age, socio-economic status, gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, and etc. I have never thought about illness at that level of complexity. I learned that good doctors are not about treating the disease; rather, it’s about healing the patients. I think this idea will be carried in me throughout my medical school education and medical practice in the future. Furthermore, another topic I learned in this course is about “illness”. I never thought that “illness” is different than “disease” because people constantly say that they are ill. However, after taking this course, I learned that disease is about the pathological change of the body. In contrast, illness is not only about the pathological change of the body, but also the effects of the disease, such as the mental influence. Again, mental support is really important in the “care” part of practice rather than diagnosing/treating.