“I don’t like doing my 28-hour calls, but I can motivate myself to do them because I know I’m needed.”
To kick off the relaunch of The Underrepresented Physician, I’ve decided to restart the page with an article highlighting Shirlene Obuobi. Shirlene is an incredibly warm, energetic, fun person, and it truly was a pleasure getting to speak with her virtually. The thing that intrigued me most about Shirlene was her amazing artistic talents. Her Instagram page, @shirlywhirlmd, is dedicated to beautifully drawn comics that touch on all sorts of healthcare-related topics. Not only does Shirlene use her art to make people laugh, but she utilizes it to talk about disparities in healthcare, and about social issues others may not think about in their day-to-day life.
I’m honored to share Shirlene’s story today, as I feel she not only inspires the traditional pre-med student but the pre-med students who struggle with balancing the creative aspects of their personality with their scientific minds.
Shirlene knew from a very young age that she wanted to become a doctor. Since her mom was a pediatrician, Shirlene was exposed to medicine early on and grew up hearing about the ins and outs of the healthcare industry. While Shirlene was in elementary school, her mom completed her residency and fellowship, which is how Shirlene learned about how the medical pathway traditionally goes. In middle school, Shirlene’s family moved to Arkansas for a few years, where her mom was a physician to roughly 50,000 people. While in Arkansas, Shirlene helped with plenty of community service projects in the local hospital, such as the Reach Out program and the Read chapter her mom established during their time there. All of this collectively inspired her to pursue the medical field.
By high school, Shirlene was certain she wanted to become a physician. “I knew myself very quickly. I’m not motivated by accolades or money, right? I worked a couple of jobs, and getting up for work and going to work… even eight-hour days, even though I work way more than that now… it was really hard for me to push myself through it. I didn’t feel like I was particularly needed, like I could have been replaced by anyone else. And I think medicine has this very unique aspect in it, like you are needed desperately, all the time… You’re very directly having an impact.” Her passion for helping others drove Shirlene even further towards medicine, and soon thereafter she ended up at Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in Philosophy Neuroscience Psychology (PNP) and minored in Public Health.
Shirlene went down this path for college because she felt she needed something science-related, despite her lack of passion for basic science. Her Philosophy Neuroscience Psychology major allowed her to learn about science-related topics she found interesting, without the sometimes tedious aspects of a traditional biology degree.
Often, pre-med students are encouraged to partake in research during undergrad, as it is valued highly in the scientific community. However, Shirlene’s strengths and passions lay in artistic expressions, such as writing and drawing. Instead of taking the traditional route, Shirlene decided to pursue her personal interests during undergrad. She co-founded a comic club and encouraged writers and artists to come together and create, which ultimately set her apart in the medical school application process.
During undergrad, Shirlene faced a few obstacles. “When it came time for me to ask about actually applying, I was told I needed to take a gap year, and that I was not going to get in. And when I was like ‘I don’t want to take a gap year’, they printed out a sheet of statistics for black women and getting into medical school, and then drew a line where my GPA was and where my MCAT score was. They were like, ‘This is your chance of getting in.’”
Another complication Shirlene faced was acquiring letters of recommendation from professors at her university. Being at Washington University in St. Louis, where class sizes were traditionally large, it was hard to make connections with professors for letters of recommendation. Discussion groups, which were traditionally smaller classes, were offered to upperclassmen to allow them to make connections with professors. However, these classes weren’t offered soon enough for Shirlene to enroll and form a bond with one of her professors before she applied to medical school. “I had this horrible thing happen to one of my letter writers. He told me he would write me a letter and I needed this one science letter from him and then out of nowhere, he stopped responding to my emails. I remember it was creeping up to the time of applying, like June, July… he still wasn’t responding.” Pre-med students are required to submit two to five letters of recommendation with their medical school application, depending on the school they apply to. Most of these letters are supposed to come from a science faculty member at the college or university the applicant is applying from. Losing a letter writer so close to application time would be absolutely terrifying, especially at such a large university. “Now, I didn’t ace O-Chem [organic chemistry], but what I did was live at office hours. I worked really, really hard… I was pretty much in this man’s office every single day. I got really desperate, and so I reached out to my O-Chem professor. He remembered me because I was always there and I was always asking questions, and we sat down and had a two-hour-long conversation, and he really got to know me… I think about that all the time, about how I would not have been here if I had not had that person who really stuck his head out for me.”
A final hurdle Shirlene faced was the costs of applications, hotels, and flights. The application fees for medical school alone can tally up to be around $2,800 (Swathmore, 2020). Shirlene spoke about how this was difficult for her, but even more challenging for her peers who came from low-income families and were unable to afford the application fees, as well as the plane tickets and hotel rooms they needed if they applied out of state or somewhere far from home. These costs are often unspoken about amongst pre-med students--many don’t realize how expensive the application cost can be, as it’s not generally mentioned by advisors or peers.
When it came time for applications and interviews, Shirlene did incredibly well because she was different than other applicants and incredibly passionate. Shirlene ended up attending the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, which has an acceptance rate of 4% (Princeton Review).
I asked Shirlene about any role models she had, and she mentioned her current mentor, Dr. Monica Vela. Dr. Vela is an internal medicine doctor, and Shirlene’s ‘second mom’. Funnily enough, Dr. Vela interviewed Shirlene for medical school, and since then has been extremely helpful in Shirlene’s journey through medicine. Dr. Vela works each year to recruit a diverse class and also pushes to educate everyone on healthcare disparities. She always helps Shirlene in times of need and informs Shirlene about issues that she may experience one day, being a woman of color. Shirlene explained that Dr. Vela’s mentorship is unlike any other mentorship she’s had before.
When I first stumbled upon Shirly Whirl MD, what really drew me in was how Shirlene combined her art with her career as a physician. I don’t often find physicians who mix their craft with their career, and it was inspiring to see someone who utilized artwork to communicate issues, experiences, and stories related to medicine. Of course, I had to ask her about what inspired this. “I think it goes back to what I said about finding those things that make you mentally happy and healthy. People are always asking me, ‘How do you stay productive, how do you do all of this?’ It’s because this is how I reflect and this is how I stay true to who I am… Because otherwise, it’s so easy to become just a medical student or become a resident. Like it’s really easy to just pigeon-hold yourself, right?”
Some of Shirlene's comics from her Instagram page, @shirlywhirlmd.
The reason Shirlene started @shirlywhirlmd was that she wanted to express herself through comics. In fact, her comics started in a Facebook group for her and her classmates during medical school. It was her third year of medical school that her best friend Linda told Shirlene that she needed to share her comics with the world because they were inspiring and helping those within her medical school chat. Thus, @shirlywhirlmd was born. “The reasonings behind it were kind of two-fold. I feel like medicine, despite being a team-based field, can be kind of isolating, because we’re all incredibly intelligent, type-A people, and we don’t really put voices to our weaknesses, right? And so a lot of times, we feel alone in our feelings of inadequacy, and any negative feelings we might be having, we don’t really voice them. And we don’t realize that someone two seats away is feeling the same thing... When I started doing Shirly Whirl, I realized very quickly that a lot of people related to everything that I was saying.” @shirlywhirlmd became therapeutic for Shirlene and her followers. It was a place where everyone could realize they were not alone, and also a place where Shirlene could vent her frustrations via artwork and writing.
However, Shirlene is not artistically tied to just drawing. In fact, Shirlene is an incredibly skilled writer, and in the process of publishing her first novel. A struggle Shirlene experienced in her writing process was wanting to write about others who were different than her. She always felt it was best to write about others because she thought it would help her become a better writer. This was all until she went to another writer’s talk, where he said something that changed her approach to fiction writing. “Honestly, every writer writes about themselves. Like there’s a bunch of white dude writers who are writing about white dude writers, and nobody’s like, ‘Is that you?’ And so why do we have this pressure on ourselves to write about experiences we’re not having, and what does it say about ourselves? That we don’t think our own experiences are good enough to inspire this?” After hearing this, Shirlene’s writing approach shaped completely. She began writing her book walking around the hospital between rounds and brainstorming ideas in her free time with friends. Eventually, she finished her novel and is currently in the publication process. Her book, “ON ROTATION”, is a rom-com about a Ghanian-American medical student. It was picked up by William Morrow/Harper Collins and is set to be released in the summer of 2022.
When I asked Shirlene about advice she had for current high school and pre-med students, she had plenty of amazing advice to give:
“When you’re pre-med, think about why you want to do this. Like deeply think about it. What are your expectations going in? A lot of us go in like, ‘We want to help people’, right? But there are lots of ways to help people; lots of careers to do that in. Understand every step of this process is going to get harder. Medical schools going to kick your butt, and residency’s going to kick your butt, and that’s okay! That’s part of the growth. I say this because I remember looking into the field and having rose-colored lenses. But realize that if you’re here because you want people to feel grateful to you or you want to feel like you have a certain level of clout--which does come with having an M.D.--it can be a rude awakening when you have to deal with patients. Because they’re people, sometimes dealing with the most frustrating experiences of their lives. They have Google now. It can be really easy to get jaded.”
“Understand the context that we’re living in. I think that understanding how healthcare disparities affects health helps a lot. Like kind of keeping your eyes open so you can understand why some people get sicker than others and why certain pathophys you see in certain things exists. Have a good understanding of the world you’re entering.”
“It’s an endless rat race…Make sure you’re still being kind to yourself and good to yourself and figure out what your coping mechanisms are. Figure out what’s mentally healthy for you early… Things do get harder.”
Shirlene also says it’s important to think about what’s most important to you so you’re able to circle back when things get hard.
“For the other artsy-creative people, find ways you can relate your passion to your field. The things that make you different are the things that are going to make you a better doctor, so don’t sacrifice those things at the altar of medicine.”
“Don’t let go of those things that make you special and different and happy in pursuit of this field.”
It truly was an honor getting to meet with Shirlene. Not only is she an inspiration to students, but she is an inspiration to those who struggle to tie the artistic aspects of themselves with their scientific careers. Her story just proves that what makes you different is what sets you apart. Whether that be music, sports, art, writing, or whatever else, the hobbies that you enjoy are the things that you can incorporate into your field of study--you just have to find ways to do so.
I’m so happy to relaunch this page again, and can’t wait to see what the future entails.
Until next Sunday,
E.F.
“Frequently Asked Questions - Applying to Med School.” Health Sciences Office : Swarthmore College, 12 Oct. 2020, www.swarthmore.edu/health-sciences-office/frequently-asked-questions-applying-to-med-school.
“University of Chicago - The Univ of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine.” The Princeton Review Med School Listings, https://www.princetonreview.com/med/university-chicago-univ-chicago-pritzker-school-medicine-1032671
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