Admissions Straight Talk

Become an MD Through the Army, Debt Free! [Show Summary]

Are you interested in practicing medicine in an environment that allows you to focus on clinical excellence? Do you want to have the option of practicing medicine in a host of different environments? Is it important for you to emerge from medical school debt-free? Do you wish to serve your country? If you answered yes to these questions, a medical career in the military might be right for you. Captain Jennifer A. Cox, current Officer in Charge at the Charleston, South Carolina U.S. Army Medical Recruiting Station, shares everything you need to know about the various options available to practice medicine in the military – and have your entire medical education paid for.

Be All You Can Be - Become an MD Through the Army [Transcript]

Our guest today is Captain Jennifer A. Cox. She graduated from Lewis University in 2011 with a BSN. While earning her BSN, she was also an Army ROTC cadet. She entered active duty as a Second Lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps and has served at Fort Hood TX and Joint Base San Antonio TX. She earned her Critical Care Registered Nurse license in 2016 and then worked in the Neuro-Surgical Trauma Intensive Care Unit. Currently, Capt. Cox is the Officer in Charge at the Charleston, South Carolina U.S. Army Medical Recruiting Station. She has embraced this opportunity to commission fellow Army Medical Department Officers (while enjoying Charleston with her husband) and looks forward to her next assignment.

Can you tell us a little about your story? How did you come to be an army nurse and recruiter? [2:16]

Growing up I thought I wanted to be a special ed teacher, but when I got to college I had a revelation when meeting with a guidance counselor – there was a schedule for nursing clinicals on the wall, and I thought that is kind of perfect - I can help people and be involved in science, which was my favorite subject at the time.

I grew up in the military. My dad is a Naval Academy graduate - I had Saturday morning room inspections before I could go out and play with my friends - so it was a natural progression. I found the ROTC brochure during a school tour, met with the ROTC director, and before I knew it was going to Fort Knox for training that summer.

In terms of becoming a recruiter, I spent the first six years in the military as an RN, only seeing military treatment facilities and the hospital side of things, and I wanted to see more of the army. I applied for a broadening assignment, and when I found out I could be the officer in charge I thought that would be a good leadership challenge for me being a junior captain, and the opportunity to live in Charleston didn’t hurt, either. I really liked the opportunity to pick my medical department family, which is how I got here.

How does the U.S. Army help MD and DO wannabes become debt-free doctors? [5:01]

There are two different routes – one if you are wanting to go the civilian medical education route, and the other if you want to start in the military right away. The first is an active duty option, it’s called the Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP), which provides 100% of tuition and academic fees with a monthly stipend in medical school of about $2200. This is a 3-4 year scholarship when you begin medical school. You are commissioned as a second lieutenant, which is the first officer rank, and when you graduate you are promoted to the third officer rank,

U.S. News Answers All Your Rankings Questions [Summary]

Normally, when U.S.-based applicants talk about “the top programs,” especially when they refer to the top X, as in the top 10 or the top 20, they are referring to U.S. News Rankings, the granddaddy of educational rankings. Today we’ll hear from U.S. News Executive Editor, Anne McGrath, and Chief Data Strategist, Robert Morse.

Interview with Anne McGrath and Bob Morse of U.S. News & World Report [Transcript]

*Transcript is not literal and includes paraphrasing.

Linda: I’m so pleased to have on the show Anne McGrath, Executive Editor of U.S. News & World Report, and Robert AKA Bob Morse, Chief Data Strategist at U.S. News & World Report. Anne has been with U.S. News since 1985 and Bob has been with U.S. News since 1976. Both are pioneers in the realm of rankings. Now for all the questions I’ve ever had about rankings but was afraid to ask, and hopefully these are some of yours. I can actually get answers.

Anne and Bob, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.

Anne: Thank you, good to be here.

Bob: Thank you. We’re looking forward to doing our best effort to answer all your ranking questions. Here’s your chance to get U.S. News to answer them.

Linda: I was just thinking that this is very unusual. Usually representatives of U.S. News are asking the questions, not answering them! And I’m usually the one reading about it. It’s a pleasure to have you here. I’m really looking forward to this and I appreciate your taking the time to join me.

You’ve both been at U.S. News since the beginning of the college rankings, I think it was the 1980s, right? Around 1987 – correct me if I’m wrong.

Bob: Yes. It actually started in ’83 and ’85. They were very short versions in the weekly magazine. 1987 was the first guide book. That’s when we started doing them annually.

Linda: Can you give a little of the backstory – how did this get started? What criteria were there and how did you choose the criteria that you focused on? Has there been an evolution of the criteria over this period in the rankings?

Bob: There has definitely been an evolution of the criteria. At first the rankings were based on reputation alone. College presidents picked their top 10 schools, and the schools that had the most mentions were the ones that were rated. ’87 was the last reputation-only ranking.

Then we realized that for the rankings to become relatively more acceptable in higher education, we needed to bring in statistical data. We met with a lot of higher educators and came up with criteria to measure academic quality which is the basis for the rankings today. We knew that there was a big gap in needing consumer information on how to compare schools to each other, and we thought we could fill this gap by bringing in statistical and reputational data.

And we have evolved the methodology over time from at the beginning we had put more emphasis on inputs and recently we’ve been evolving towards putting more emphasis on outputs, graduation and retention and predicted graduation rate, what’s now account for thirty percent of the methodology and we’ve deemphasized – to at least to some degree – inputs.

Linda: Like test scores, grades, etc?

Bob: Well we never had grades –

Linda: Right.

Bob: Like at one point we had yield, and we dropped yield. And we have reduced the weight of high school class standing ...

About the Johns Hopkins University Postbac Program [Show Summary]

For many future doctors, the simple step between college and medical school is not so clear cut. For various reasons, some sudents will choose to attend a pre-medical post-baccalaureate program to help boost their skills and experiences and to help them get into medical school. Dr. Alex Tan is the director of the Johns Hopkins postbac program for premed career changers and founder and director of the postbac Health Science Intensive (HSI) program. Her approach to the premed experience is thoughtful and is strongly influenced by her passion for guiding students to med school and to better self-exploration.

Interview with the Director of the Johns Hopkins Postbac Program [Transcript]

Linda Abraham: Postbac programs for physician wannabees can make all the difference between rejection and acceptance for academic enhancers and career changers. Let's learn about the two postbac programs offered by Johns Hopkins University from their director, Dr. Alexandra Tan.

Dr. Tan earned her BS at the University of Central Arkansas and then went on to get her PhD in Biology at Johns Hopkins in 2009. Somewhere along the way, she got bitten by the premed postbac educational bug. She became director of Johns Hopkins post-baccalaureate pre-medical program for career changers in 2012 and founded and became director of the Johns Hopkins post-baccalaureate Health Science Intensive program, also in 2012. Her approach to postbac education is highly analytical and data driven. She's been working to identify objective predictors of success in the medical school admissions process and develop tangible steps that help students achieve that success.

Linda Abraham:  Let's start with the basics, what is the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Johns Hopkins and who is it for? [1:59]

Dr. Alex Tan: Sure. So, postbac programs, in general, for anybody who isn't familiar, are essentially programs that are designed to give students an extension of their undergraduate time to accomplish a particular set of goals. There are two types of postbac programs. They are classically called career-changer programs or academic enhancer programs.

The premedical program is a career-changer program, which means it's essentially designed for students who need that extra time to be able to complete the lower division science classes. These are students who haven't had the year of biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics. More specifically, Hopkins, in general, is true to its reputation for being very strong in research. We certainly care a lot about leadership and independence and support for our unique, individual students. So, this program also encompasses a lot of those other qualities, as well.

Linda Abraham: Okay, so the postbac pre-medical program is for career changers. What about the Health Sciences Intensive? How is it different, both in its structure and its outcome? [3:28]

Dr. Tan: Sure, yes, that's true. In both cases, the students have the same goals. That's very true. As I said, there are two kinds of programs. The Health Science Intensive program is categorically considered an academic enhancer program, which essentially means that you've had the biology, the general chemistry, the organic chemistry, and the physics courses, the associated labs, and all of that completed.

So, postbac programs vary a lot, if you just look at what they accept and nationally what they look like. But, generally speaking, students who are eligible for one program would be ineligible...

MIT Sloan Executive Education [Show Summary]

Today we’re going to look at executive MBA program options: MIT Sloan’s executive MBA program, which is relatively new, but more typical in structure; MIT's part-time MBA program; and the MIT Sloan Fellows program, a full-time immersive executive MBA program. We are going to learn about them from Johanna Hising DiFabio, Director, Sloan Fellows and EMBA Programs.

Interview with the Director of MIT Sloan EMBA and MIT Sloan Fellows Programs [Transcript]

Johanna worked in business after earning her undergraduate degree from Ithaca College in 2000. She came to MIT Sloan as Associate Director of Student Life and Learning in 2010, became Director of MIT’s EMBA program in 2014, and added the Sloan Fellows program to her responsibilities in 2017.

Johanna, can you provide an overview of both programs, the MIT EMBA and the MIT Sloan Fellows program? [1:54]

The Sloan Fellows program, at over 80 years old, is I believe the oldest executive degree program in history. It’s a one-year, mid-career, intensive fulltime program. Our students come from all over the world for a year to study a curriculum in general management. They start in the summer, and in the fall and spring they have lots of electives to choose from if they want from within the full-time program, as well as other opportunities to fully immerse at Sloan and MIT.

Eight years ago we started the EMBA program. We were a little late to the market with this degree in comparison to other universities out there. We started it with the aim of the curriculum being heavily action-learning focused. Students come every second or third Friday/Satday and spend six hours a day in class with the focus on going back to work on Monday and applying what they’ve learned. It is a 20-month executive program, and we are looking for general managers with experience managing teams and managing businesses. The EMBA program provides an opportunity to earn a general management degree with a few electives but not as many as Sloan Fellows has.

What do the two programs share and where do they differ? [3:50]

They share the core general management curriculum, and with both degrees we expect significant work experience coming in. Both programs also have fantastic cohorts – we hear that across the board. One aspect where they differ is on the EMBA side we expect them to have a job and be working, while with Sloan we expect them to not be working and fully immerse themselves in the program. The Sloan Fellows program is 12 months vs 20 months for the EMBA program. Sloan Fellows also offers many more elective opportunities, while the EMBA is fairly lock step and action learning focused to apply their learnings immediately. On the EMBA side 45% of students are born outside of the US but the vast majority are working in the US, and with Sloan Fellows 75-80% of the population is from outside the US, with most bringing their families. Neither program requires financial sponsorship, but of course time sponsorship is required for both.

MIT puts a strong emphasis on innovation. How does this strong emphasis on innovation play out in each of the two programs? [6:43]

There is innovation in the content students are taught. In the core there is an innovation-driven advantage in Sloan Fellows, and on the EMBA side there is entrepreneurial-driven innovation.

Summary

The Society of Women Engineers (SWE) is 40,000+ members strong worldwide, and provides a sense of community to women who may feel isolated in their engineering studies or career due to a lack of gender diversity. Karen Horting is the Executive Director & CEO of the organization, and shares a lot of great information on the engineering field, the services provided by SWE, and how members and affiliated employers can benefit from being a part of the organization.

How the Society of Women Engineers is Empowering Women

I’m so pleased to have on the show Karen Horting, Executive Director & CEO of the Society of Women Engineers. Karen worked in marketing after earning her bachelors in biology at Northern Illinois University, and she earned her MBA from the Johns Hopkins’ Carey Business School in 2000. She served as Marketing Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Director of Strategic Planning for the New York Academy of Sciences before coming to the society of Women Engineers in 2004. She became Executive Director and CEO in 2014.

What is the Society of Women Engineers, and can you give me a little background as to its founding and history? [1:28]

It is a professional organization for women in engineering. Our mission is to empower women to achieve their full potential in careers as engineers and leaders, expand the image of engineering and technical professions as a positive force in improving the quality of life, and to demonstrate the value of diversity and inclusion. We have been around since 1950, helping women succeed and advance in their careers. We have a little over 40,000 members worldwide, and that includes girls pursuing engineering careers, seasoned professionals, and women in retirement.

The organization came about because women were very much the minority in the workplace and engineering school, and didn’t have a voice, so forming their own organization was a great way to support each other, have a network, and help each other learn and grow and succeed in the profession.

Why do you think women are still under-represented in the STEM fields and in engineering? [5:08]

Research shows us the #1 factor is unconscious bias. A study we did in 2016 that focused on the workplace found that almost 40% of women engineers leave the engineering workforce by mid-career, and the #1 factor was the unconscious bias that affects things like hiring, promotion, and compensation. A lot of the work we do with our employer partners is talking about that and what they can do to make managers aware of unconscious bias and also best practices to be bias interrupters, to let women and other under-represented minorities succeed and advance in their organization. This bias exists in K-12 education and at university level as well, where it’s perceived that engineering is not a career for women, or women are not interested in things that involve math and science, and that just isn’t true. Women do exceptionally well in AP courses in math and science, and well through middle school show interest in innovation. I can’t think of a career that is more impactful than engineering, because it touches almost everything in our daily lives – it’s problem solving, and math and science are some of the tools used in that, but it’s really about improving lives.

Summary

Lolita Wood-Hill has been working in the field of pre-med advising for over 25 years, so it’s safe to say she knows the ins and outs of the medical school application process better than most. In this podcast, Lolita gives advice on how to make yourself the most enticing applicant to medical school possible, starting as early as freshman year of college. She lays out a timeline of activities, including coursework, research, and clinical experience that are an essential medical school application plan. Lolita also shares the realities of the application process, and how to prepare for it from an academic and financial perspective.

How to Plan Your Pre-Med Application Process

Our guest today, Lolita Wood-Hill, started her pre-med advising career in the early 1990s working for AAMC’s Summer Health Professions Education Program , which had a different name then. She then worked as Deputy Director for Premedical Studies and Prehealth Advising at CCNY and Hunter College. She arrived at YU and assumed the role of Director for Prehealth Advisement in September 2010. In that role, Lolita provides academic and career guidance for all students interested in health profession careers.

Three and four years before planning to start med school, what’s a successful applicant’s timeline? [2:44]

First-year students need to understand about grades. The transition from high school to college can be tough, so it is important for them to find tutors, to find upperclassmen that can give them info on classes, and to make sure they know how to access money for books, for example. Freshmen struggle with this, and if that transition is really bumpy then all of a sudden the first year of college turns out to be a C in Bio, a C+ in Calculus, and you are climbing uphill.

First-year students need to think about how to transition to college successfully and also what they will need three years later – they will need letters of recommendation, so start looking at professors. Who do you like the most? Who do you have the best rapport with? And continue those relationships so in two-three years you can ask for a letter of recommendation. Also, think about your interests outside of the classroom – look at clubs (though in the first semester no one should join a club, people should be focused on their grades) and extracurricular activities to participate in. When you apply, you need to have a robust resume, which should start the second semester of your first year.

Second-year students need to start thinking about research by the end of their sophomore year, thinking about summer research, doing it with a faculty member (so figuring out who you want to do research with), and overall figuring out where the research opportunities are. Students often don’t think about things until they are upon them, but they need to really think about their plan as soon as they are in the door. You only have three years that you are going to show to a medical school in your application, so you need to make the most of them.

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When do you recommend applicants start getting clinical exposure? [5:36]

That can start in freshman year.

Summary

Brian Hoffman started Nomad Credit to primarily work with international students in helping them find and secure student loans, car loans, health insurance, and more. What many don’t realize is how difficult it is to secure credit in the United States if you don’t already have U.S.-based products, many of which you don’t even have access to until you physically move to the country. Brian’s company provides a matching service based on the unique needs of his customers. For example, if you are in India looking to secure a student loan, Nomad helps you narrow down your options and find the best choice. As his business grows, he looks to expand in other countries, both with schools and lending partners.

Show Notes

How can Nomad Credit help an international student navigate the complex credit system in the United States?

Our guest today is Brian Hoffman, founder and CEO of Nomad Credit. Brian earned his bachelors in finance from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business in 2012. He began his full-time professional career in trading for about two years and then became an analyst for a company dedicated to helping clients optimize the value of data assets. In late 2015 he founded Nomad Credit, a financial marketplace for those underserved by other marketplaces, specifically non-permanent U.S. residents.

Let’s start with the basics. What is Nomad Credit? What services and/or products does it provide? [2:22]

It’s a platform for international students to help them obtain credit, find insurance products, etc. We don’t provide the loans, but we connect them to partners of ours who do. We also help them with some admissions questions.

How did you come up with the idea behind Nomad? What’s the back story? [3:01]

We wanted to get into traditional student lending like SoFi, but realized we needed to have a competitive advantage or niche to compete, so we decided to transition away from traditional student lending to this niche business. What we realized is that someone coming to the U.S. for the first time needs all the credit products – student loans, credit cards, car loans, insurance, and we decided to go that route.

What’s been your biggest challenge in launching Nomad? [4:30]

There are two. The first is cultural – there are different ways of doing business with lenders in other parts of the world. The second is technology, both for consumers who have never seen an online loan application, and also for lending partners who have never put their loan application online.

What is the biggest or most distinctive benefit of getting a loan through Nomad as opposed to just searching the internet or getting one in their home country? [6:49]

For a long time that’s how students got loans – in their home countries. What people don’t realize is that interest rates are often drastically higher in other parts of the world. In India, for example, student loans are going out at 12-13%, and in the U.S. students can get interest rates in the 4-8% range. Also, if you get a loan in India, it has to be transferred, and there are big FX fees on that, so with a loan from here you don’t have those fees as well, so it tends to be much more cost effective to get the loan here.

What are some of the challenges faced by international students when they try to get student loans?

Show Summary

Katie Luby will be graduating this spring from the MIT Sloan Fellows program, and can’t say enough good things about the experience. Coming from Salesforce, and with an anthropology and design educational background, business school was a whole new animal. Katie feels her experience at MIT Sloan Fellows will uniquely enhance her work as a human-centered design practitioner, especially in the areas of technology implementation, innovation, and leadership. While she has gained many tools to help her in her work, the most meaningful aspect of her time at MIT Sloan has been the relationships she has developed with the other Fellows. With a diverse cohort from all around the world, the exposure to new ways of thinking and working has been unparalleled. Add in the fact that her 8 ½ year old daughter has been with her throughout the experience, and she wouldn’t change a thing.

Show Notes

Our guest today, is Katie Luby, MIT Sloan Fellow, MBA student, and Innovation and Transformation Director, Design Architect at Salesforce. Katie started out studying movies, earned her master’s in design from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and worked in tech for companies like Motorola, Sapient, and Razorfish before landing at Salesforce, where she has been since 2013, except for her current stay in Boston as an MIT Sloan Fellow.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [2:10]

I am from Chicago, born and raised in Evanston. It is a great city to be in, with lots of swimming, bike riding, great culture and museums. During most of my free time I try to get outside and enjoy some of the cultural offerings. In Boston there is also great culture, and a little smaller city which is nice, and I am really looking forward to spring right now since the weather has been “interesting.”

You started out studying film and cinematography and then did a Masters in Design. How did you go from the movies to design? [3:17]

I feel like I have a pretty windy path, but also feel like everything I have done really has built on itself. In undergrad I studied anthropology, so I’ve always been interested in the study of people and behaviors and culture. Coming out of school, applied anthropology didn’t really exist in the field – you really had to go to a tribe to study, we really couldn’t study ourselves, and between the time I graduated and then got a masters suddenly ethnography was being used as a tool with all sorts of design problems, business problems, cultural problems – so that fell into place. Between my undergrad and masters I worked on documentary films and film production. I spent some time in San Francisco and then came back to Chicago, working with a lot of really smart creative people in advertising. I worked in teams to make advertising ideas come alive, sourcing materials, building things, conceptualizing ideas in real form, dealing with budgets, and problem solving. I never considered myself a creative, but loved the idea of design and art direction looking to solve a problem. When I found the institute of design, one of just a few programs in the country that accepts people in their masters program without an undergrad degree in design, I learned theory and practice around how to solve problems with a design perspective. A hot topic now is design thinking, and it is really the perspective of who the users are and what the issue at hand is. Are we looking at the right problem? Coming up with creative and elegant solutions to meet that need?

Our guest today, Dr. Nadia Afridi earned her bachelors and MD in Canada and then did a residency in plastic surgery at Dalhousie University. She also earned her Executive MBA from Columbia in 2017.

Can you tell us about your background?  Where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [1:09]

I was born and raised in Canada, the only child of physicians who immigrated to Canada in the 1970s, so I have been surrounded by medicine my whole life. As a result, I knew a lot about medicine and decided to pursue it and did most of my training in Canada. Once I did my residency I wanted to do my fellowship training with a doctor I admired, so I moved to Nashville, TN and worked for a year there, and then did another fellowship with a non-profit, traveling all over the world doing cleft lip, cleft palate, and burn reconstruction surgery for children. That was a hard year emotionally, but so satisfying to be able to help so tangibly.

You did your undergrad and medical education including a residency in plastic surgery in Canada. You then did you one year of sub-specialty training in the U.S., focusing on reconstructive and aesthetic breast surgery. You are now a member of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and associate fellow of the American College of Surgeons. Was it hard professionally to move to the U.S. from Canada? [2:56]

Compared to what many people who immigrated to the United States go through it was relatively easy. Almost all of my education was already recognized when I came south of the border. So it wasn’t like my MD wasn’t recognized. I didn’t have to redo any training, but anytime you make a major move to a new place without an established network it is somewhat challenging, but it was doable. It was more the practical, business aspects as opposed to the regulatory and educational ones.

What was hardest aspect of your medical education? [4:28]

That you spend so much time before you become even remotely employable, which is a bit daunting. A lot of people get exhausted just thinking about the path ahead of you. I just tried to take it step by step, and with staging, there is initially more classroom and then progressing to a clinical environment. Another one of the hardest parts is choosing your specialty and then of course getting into it.

Let’s turn to your experience as an EMBA student. Why did you want to add an MBA to your MD? [5:50]

I had been in practice here awhile in New York and it was going relatively well. In some ways I had reached a professional plateau, and yearned to learn something new and completely different from medicine, so I decided to see if I could meet the standards of admission to Columbia. I knew for sure I would be able to extract an ROI from the MBA degree by streamlining the way I ran my business, but also I thought long term I would be ready to move onto a different phase of my career, and the skills, network, and contacts from the MBA would serve me well at that point.

CBS offers 3 NY-based EMBA options (EMBA-NY Saturday, EMBA-NY: Fri/Sat; and EMBA Americas) Why did you choose what you chose? [7:47]

I chose the Fri/Sat program and probably wouldn’t have done the program if not for that option. Every second weekend you go to school all day Friday and Saturday. What I liked about that schedule was that I knew I would hav...

Our guest today is soon-to-be doctor Mary Tate and current 4th year medical student at Harvard Medical School. Mary graduated from Dartmouth in 2012 and has been at HMS since 2013. She was very active at Dartmouth and continued to be a change agent at HMS. In 2017 she earned her MPH at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health, and by the end of the month, she’ll be Dr. Mary Tate.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? [1:29]

I was born and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I am the youngest of eight children, and have 18 nieces and nephews, so there was always someone around, someone to learn from. I went to public schools that really valued the arts, so I was involved in the arts from a young age. I played violin starting in 4th grade and by middle school was doing theatre, putting on three productions a year. My high school did 10-12 shows a year, so I’ve never been a stranger to the stage, and it was a really big part of my upbringing. I also have a brother with severe intellectual disabilities who is eight year older than me, and one of my roles was as a caregiver to him, so I learned how to be there for someone else who needed it.

When you think back on the application process, what did you find most difficult? [5:57]

The personal statement, for a number of reasons. First, the drafting of it should take place over the course of months. Creating something that is trying to meet the word limit, tells about who you are, why you want to be a physician, and has a cohesive theme that feels unique is really challenging and requires a lot of reflection. I broke down when I started writing it because it sounded like what everyone else would be saying, like, “I want to be a doctor because I want to eliminate suffering.” I couldn’t say that! Over time I learned the more I continued to write the more I was able to anchor it with my experiences. What makes my story unique is sharing my life experiences and as a result why I want to alleviate suffering through medicine - why it makes sense. Additionally, I didn’t want to be a burden by asking others to read it, but you really need lots of people to read your drafts, ones who will give you the painful feedback you need to hear.

What would you have changed about your approach to it, looking back now? [9:40]

What helped me is starting really early. By the time I’d gotten to the point of applying I already knew that I needed to ask for help. That took time to feel comfortable with. I knew how to utilize the resources available to me. I don’t know if I would have done anything differently, but getting comfortable asking for help and being resourceful, if I hadn’t done that work - that is what I would want to tell people. So many people try to go it alone. There are a lot of people that can potentially help you out, so you should take advantage of that. I would make sure I did those things again. You need someone who is really close to you to read each draft to make sure your personality is showing through, and you need a grammar person, and a professor or others in academia to show when you have a draft you are proud of. And one last person to look again when you think it is done, and are ready to hit submit, just one more person who reads it for the very first...