Premedical Program
Brian Desaulniers '04
Brian Desaulniers has always excelled in the sciences. Yet one of the most valuable classes this premedical student took in his college career was not biology or physics or chemistry, but an English class. Desaulniers participated in Richard Gillin's summer session at Kiplin Hall, a three-week excursion to England and Ireland that combined mountain hiking with the study of Romantic poetry.
"We learned a lot about William Wordsworth, Seamus Heaney and the Brontes, but I think we learned even more about ourselves," Desaulniers said. "It was awe-inspiring to climb the second-highest mountain in England, and then to climb the highest mountain in Ireland. Meeting that kind of challenge does something to you. It's a metaphor for what you do in life, what it takes to get to medical school. You can't climb just one mountain, but you have to climb many mountains to get where you want to go. It also validated what Dr. Verville is always telling us: that we should absorb as much as we can as undergraduates, do what we love to do, and not plan our lives around being premedical students. I'm a true believer in being well-rounded."
As a student, he took an emergency medical training class, volunteered for the rescue squad, and spent an intensive internship with Dr. Sandra Takai '74, a pediatrician with a practice in Gaithersburg, MD.
"When Sandra Takai visited campus, we met and she asked how she could help," Verville recalls. "I told her about Brian and his interest in pediatrics, and she offered to show him the ropes. She essentially adopted him as her own son for a week, letting him live with her family, feeding him, and introducing him to her own practice, the pediatrics emergency room, and her work at the hospital."
"Sure, we know right away that we have to take a standard set of classes, but how we do them, when we do them, what classes you take in relation to them, is all up to us," Desaulniers reflects upon his experience in the premedical program. "The program allows you to do the things you want to do, to find your own way through it."
Brian recently completed his fourth year of medical school at the University of Maryland and was matched with his number one choice for residency in emergency medicine, Palmetto Health in Columbia, SC.
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