Fellowship Application

Since the Loewenstern--I have definitely been considering what to do this upcoming summer. I had also contemplated whether or not to take a gap year, spurring my interest in the Watson Fellowship. Below is my essay, as well as a preliminary project proposal. Ultimately, I did not go forward with my application, but have since sought other summer opportunities to learn more about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which I gained interest in while in China. I plan to apply to the Sichuan Provincial Scholarship to study TCM at the Chengdu University of TCM this summer. However, the application does not require any essays. 

Fellowship essay:

When explaining my love of cooking to others, my mother always said it was because foodies make the best chefs. I would simply laugh in agreement. From a young age, I was no stranger to the kitchen; in a household that among other things emphasized home cooking and healthy eating, the kitchen was a hub of activity before meals. At the time, I was always lifting the lids off the bubbling pots to peer inside and sneak a whiff. As I grew older, I graduated from being the occasional test-taster to a dishwasher and helper, and finally a full-fledged cook. I learned to balance flavors, colors, and textures to create meals that looked and tasted good. Most of all, I made sure that the meals were good in terms of nutrition. When it came to cooking, my personal mantra was ‘delicious and nutritious.’ Through cooking, I discovered a world of possibility.

As my culinary ability grew, so did my passion for medicine, inspired by my visits to my pediatrician as a child. Despite the painful vaccines and my subsequent bouts of crying, I remembered the sympathy and kindness of my physician as she directed my attention to the shiny new Looney Tunes Band-Aids covering my ‘boo-boos.’ I knew then that I wanted to one day care for and comfort others as my pediatrician had for me. Though naïve, this aspiration remained even as the frequency of visits to my pediatrician waned, matured by my shadowing experience. While I witnessed the easy rapport the pediatric cardiologist established with his patients and their parents, I also became acquainted with the complexities he faced, such as balancing quality of care with affordable costs for an uninsured patient. These challenges did not daunt me, but rather have heightened my passion for medicine.

This summer while in China volunteering with a NGO as a Loewenstern Fellow, I developed a morning routine of reading news from my NPR app while riding the subway to work. One morning, my entire outlook was transformed by a single headline: ‘A Dose Of Culinary Medicine Sends Med Students To The Kitchen.’ Perhaps just an interesting news flash to some, this was earth-shattering to me, as it was my first time learning of a direct junction between my two greatest passions, medicine and cooking. Up until then, I had never seriously considered the integration of cooking and medicine, only joking with friends and family that I would open a bakery if medical school did not work out. Now, my two worlds were colliding, but in the best way possible.

According to the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, culinary medicine ‘is the utilization of a unique combination of nutrition and culinary knowledge to assist patients in achieving and maintaining optimal health.’ Looking back, I had already unknowingly touched on various aspects of culinary medicine. My sophomore year, I became the food representative of my residential college Jones, responsible for serving as a liaison between the servery and the students. However, conversations with my fellow Jonesians soon revealed a lack of cooking experience, a major hindrance for those soon to be moving off campus, and off the meal plan. Seeing a chance to improve the situation through my position, I hosted a salad-making and tasting study break. Selecting an array of easily-prepared vegetarian- and omnivore-friendly salads, I hoped the event would help dispel the notion that cooking was hard. With a number of helping hands making the salads, and many more helping mouths eating them, the event was a success.

Not one to be complacent, I sought ways to broaden the scope of my efforts to all of Rice campus and perhaps even beyond. After being introduced to public health through my Global Health Technologies minor, I was eager to see how it fit in the context of medicine. This is what motivated me to co-lead a new Alternative Spring Break (ASB) trip to an urban farm in Fifth Ward, a prominent food desert in Houston with only one full-service grocery store in the entire five square mile area. Upon becoming aware of the jarring disparity between Rice, the fourth healthiest college, and the city to which it belonged, Houston--once dubbed “America’s Fattest City”--I was determined to explore the issue of food sustainability and food accessibility with fellow Rice students while also giving back to the Houston community through service. For me, the trip highlighted the complexities of addressing an individual’s, and by extension a community’s, lifestyle choices. When we offered to pick a salad mix for a lady who came by looking for something to eat, she merely said dismissively ‘I don’t eat salad.’ However, the produce became much more readily accepted by the community members when the leafy greens became the toppings for pizzas made fresh on the farm. These moments made me realize that availability does not equal accessibility. In my mind, this is where culinary medicine fits in.  While dietary habits are only one component of the many health determinants of wellbeing, it is still an important one. Rather than simply telling a patient to eat more fruits and vegetables, a physician should be able to personalize this advice to help the patient achieve it.

After reading and re-reading the NPR article, I eagerly researched available opportunities to study culinary medicine alongside the standard medical curriculum. Unfortunately, such training is sparse; as mentioned in the article, only about a fourth of US medical schools offer the 25 hours of nutrition training recommended by the National Academy of Science, much less a culinary medicine program. Although initially disappointing, the situation was ultimately an opportunity. Over a spicy dinner of hotpot with a staff member of the Rice Center for Civic Leadership and my Loewenstern peers, the conversation turned to the Watson Fellowship as she told us about it. Immediately interested, I began pondering what I would spend a year doing. Now, everything fell into place. As a Watson Fellow, I could not only learn culinary medicine, but also compare and contrast practices among different communities and countries. I also look forward to being able to share this with my fellow medical students, just as I already share my culinary skills with others. Through the Watson, I can finally integrate my two passions in order to better serve others. My mother says foodies make the best chefs, but perhaps they make the best physicians as well.   

Project proposal:

I have the Loewenstern Fellowship to thank for even envisioning this as an extension of my abroad experience. During my time in China, conversations would regularly touch upon the various dishes on the table and their respective ingredients—how they were well-suited for the time of year, or for a specific condition. These snippets of wisdom were not new to me, as I had heard them growing up. While I did not always believe everything I was told, there were some I deemed to have merit. Nevertheless, I have yet to probe the scientific basis of these claims. While in Anlong village, I was fascinated by the large, full-color posters in almost every household designating beneficial and detrimental food pairings, each with a brief justification. I would like to learn about this in a more structured setting by taking a 3 month course at the Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I would then take a step back out of the medicinal focus of food and go to France for 3 months to understand the cuisine there. I think there is much to be learned from a culture that maintains its traditional roots and fresh ingredients, a contrast from the American cuisine—which has no one ‘staple diet’ but is quite literally a global melting pot. More than just learning skills in the kitchen, I hope to also better understand the sociocultural structures that are inherent to France’s cuisine. For example, while in France with my family on vacation, I remember being especially impressed by the availability of fresh produce, which were extensions to ordinary corner stores. I hope to be able to identify concepts that can be applied to the States as well. I would then spend the next 3 months in India to continue the journey of culinary medicine. I would then study at the Kerala Ayurveda Academy to learn Ayurvedic cooking and understand the concept of food as medicine through this field. For my last 3 months, I would like to round out the experience with nutrition courses at the University of Surrey under the Department of Nutritional Sciences.  

Interviews--feedback and reflection

Community member: Mark Takefman

I was fortunate to get the chance to catch up with Mark over Skype. He was the leader of the Shui Tian Ping Village health survey project that I worked on over the summer, not to mention a good friend as well. When I first asked whether he would be willing to offer an evaluation of me over email, he made the valid point that his ability to do so was limited given that he had only known me for a summer. Nevertheless, he was more than willing to offer feedback based on my time with CURA. During our Skype call, I asked fairly straightforward questions about what changes he saw in me during the summer, and my strengths and weaknesses. He joked that the only change he saw from me was my change of clothes. Overall, he noted that I had an open, extroverted personality and was willing to take initiative but also able to work well with others. He liked that I wasn’t afraid to ‘put myself out there’ and had the confidence to use self-deprecating humor. He did also comment on my being a foodie of sorts—with a suggestion that I share what I buy more (though I would contest that this was a misperception when I saved some items I had purchased for my host family). His other suggestions included continuing to build and develop my leadership, as there’s always more to be learned, not to mention the value of working alongside different people. Despite his kind words, I brought up some instances when I thought I had been quite subpar—i.e. some communication mishaps that left him in the dark. I thanked him for how forgiving he had been in those moments, and how I had learned from them. His reply was that the mishaps were not entirely my fault, but were also due to the situation as well. Towards the end of the interview, I got to see some of the other CURA members as they arrived in the office, which was such a joy. I am definitely looking forward to visiting again in the future.

Family member: Mother

While I was in Chengdu over the summer, my family actually came to visit me for a few days as a part of the ‘vacation time’ they had set aside from the rest of the two weeks they had to visit family. Perhaps it was then that my mother observed how well-versed I was in Chengdu eats. She remarked that I was even more of a foodie since my fellowship and that my Chinese proficiency had certainly improved. Aside from the more surface level qualities, my mother was quick to also list that I was more positive, mature, open-minded, independent and better with communication. Although she didn’t give as many specific examples for each as I would have liked (so I could agree/disagree with her from a more objective view), I trust her judgment.

Faculty member: Dr. Qilin Li

She is currently out of office; I will be meeting with her next week after she has returned.  During our meeting, I intend to share about my experiences and learn how that might relate to hers. I would also like to ask what suggestions she might have for me in terms of incorporating this experience into my future career trajectory. This summer, I would like to do some sort of internship before medical school, and would appreciate insights she might have.

Self-evaluation/reflection

This assignment was quite interesting, and I appreciate the chance it gave me to actively seek feedback from others and see my experience in another light. Overall, I would say there were no big ‘surprises’ with respect to the feedback, though perhaps the lack of surprises was actually a surprise to me. I was expecting to be made aware of my blind spots and had prepared accordingly, reflecting over the shortcomings I was aware of in anticipation. Ultimately, I was told mostly good things; nevertheless, I still learned a lot from these conversations. Mark’s comment on my openness and initiative as something different from other volunteers he’d worked got me thinking that it could be something beyond my own personality, but rather is reflective of the social background I come from. Both my personal experiences as well as the environment at Rice as a whole have made taking initiative almost second nature to me. On the other hand, students my age in China may not have been immersed in a similar academic/extracurricular environment that places emphasis on the same set of core values. Along these lines, I feel very grateful to have worked with CURA and with such an awesome project leader that really made it a point to let me take initiative with the project. I imagine it could have been possible for me to have worked in a different setting that was not conducive towards individual initiative. A theoretical interview from someone in this setting might have resulted in an entirely different evaluation of the same qualities I exhibit. This points out that others’ evaluations are not necessarily absolute; just because your skill set didn’t match one endeavor does not mean it is no longer suitable for any.

            Prior to my meeting with Mark, I thought about potential shortcomings he might address. To me, I thought my communication could have been stronger, as there had been times when my failure to communicate left him in the dark about group plans. When I brought this up, Mark, being the graciously forgiving person he is, was quick to say those events had been more due to circumstance than to my character. Nevertheless, having the chance to reflect about it was spurred in anticipation of the meeting, and is something I am more conscious about now as a result.

            As for my mother’s feedback, I could definitely agree with most of my mother’s ‘superficial’ observations. My Chinese did improve, as did my repertoire of Chengdu eats. But beyond the superficial, it was interesting to learn which changes or characteristics stood out to her the most. My mother felt that the trip made me more open-minded, which I had not consciously thought about. Prior to the trip, my mother had mentioned from time to time how stubborn I could be. She also made the point that this was not a desirable trait of a leader or of a team member. I kept her advice in mind and definitely strove to improve. Perhaps the inherent open-mindedness I had going into the fellowship towards a new environment carried over into my ‘regular’ personality. It was certainly encouraging to hear from her that I had made progress.