Medical Mentor: Anjali Ravee

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Major: Biology B.S

Minor: Sociology

Pre-Medical

Biology Ambassador

Medical Mentor

Hillis Scholar

Baylor Alumnus Class of 2020

Q. What has your experience been like in academia as a minority?

A. In the beginning, I think when I came into my freshman year at Baylor it was a bit challenging to find different avenues for help as a STEM major and as an Indian American at Baylor there are minority groups for my ethnic group on campus, but I didn’t feel like super involved in any sort of minority group right off the bat. I feel like as I got older and older throughout the process, I actively sought out ways to mentor younger minorities in order to help them not have the same feelings that I had coming into my freshman/sophomore year.

I think I have always approached academia or mentoring from the stance that I want to help other people have a different experience from any of the negative ones that I have had. I am not saying I have had terrible experiences, but I will say it was challenging in the beginning to find the right resources that best suited me. I ultimately committed to MSO (Medical Student Association) and I loved my time in MSO. I became involved in leadership and then became president which was under the premise that I just wanted everyone to be passionate about the future of healthcare. Not so much solely passionate about their grades, but more so passionate about making future patients feel like they have a home and are valued. Along with that, the feeling that they are being cared for by us as future physicians. That was more important to me more than anything. When I came in, I had no idea how I was going to accomplish anything but over time I found the right resources to help me achieve my goals.

As a minority student, based on my ethnicity, the color of my skin, but also as a woman, I think it was super important for me to find the right people that would help mentor me. It was especially difficult in my opinion to find proper mentorship from a female professor that I really connected with. And until I met professors like Dr. Marcie Moehnke and Dr. Erika Abel, they both ended up becoming very close mentors of mine, especially Dr. Moehnke and Dr. Dean. They were all pivotal to my success at Baylor.

Q. You had mentioned how you come into contact with some of these professors?

A. Working in the department was a big plus but I think also just putting myself out there and going to different events that they sponsored or any of the seminars they put on for academic success. I went to them as a freshman and sophomore not necessarily needing it all the time, but I went with the purpose of networking and something that they do not teach you in high school especially if I do not know. As a minority student you are already at a disadvantage at a predominantly white institution like Baylor. I think we need to do better in promoting these different ideas like the academic magazine that you guys are doing. It's a good thing to help minority students have access to these different avenues that they may not be aware of. If there's any chance that you might meet someone really important at one of these networking events, you need to be there and in active attendance. You never know when it will lead to a job, connection, or opportunity.

I remember the first day of Sophomore Year I went to some networking event for welcome week and it was like a Dr. Pepper Hour or some random thing like that and I ended up meeting my future Principle Investigator that I would later work with for the next few years, Dr. Pitts. He is a huge mentor of mine, I love him to bits, and had I never gone, it would have taken me a lot longer for me to find my place in that research lab. I am personally a pretty extroverted person, but I started off not being super out there and as a freshman. I was like a chicken without a head running around not knowing who to talk to. But when I committed to an organization, I found upperclassmen that I worked well with and they helped me so much they took me in as their little sister and like it was amazing what they did for me. They saw something within me that I did not see in myself at the time and it helped me take off at Baylor. I think as upperclassmen as well we need to do the same and pay it forward.

So whenever I see freshmen that are putting in the effort, I automatically meet them halfway or oftentimes more than halfway because it takes them a little bit more push. I do it for everyone but when I see a struggling minority student in any category I always try to help them get to where they want to go because I know how hard it has been for me to find the right avenues for my own success. But every single year it gets harder and harder to get into med school so it is especially important that we offer any advice we can to younger students along the way.

Q. What changes have you seen here at Baylor or what changes do you hope to see?

A. I think as of late I've seen more minority students at Baylor more than ever and that puts a smile on my face because they are recruiting from so many different places and with that comes more diversity in thought and experience but also that kind of requires that Baylor changes as well to meet the demand for inclusion and understanding.

One thing that Baylor has done that is a great thing is the changes to the core curriculum including more cultural experiences. A lot of my freshmen have been telling me about that and are complaining about it but honestly I'd rather do that than four Lifetime Fitness’ and random foreign language requirements especially as a future healthcare provider you need to know how to work with people and understand different areas and like where people come from, so I think it's super important and a cool thing that Baylor is doing. Right now, I'm actually advising a student but they are requiring that students do distribution classes across their time at Baylor and they can be from any of the disciplines, any of the humanities, music appreciation, and then they also have to go to a set number of cultural experiences like theater performances, music performances, things like that. It is a good way to get involved in what is going on campus.

If students actually engage in what they are going to. If you are just going to fulfill the credit, obviously you are not going to get much out of it. You are doing it for a reason, and I think it's a response to some of the criticisms that have been going on for the past couple of years at Baylor, but I think it's a good response and it's something that's necessary. I have seen it at other schools too where they require their students to go to certain events like this. I think it's bringing Baylor into a newer age, especially with us trying to move in to higher research program and more of a global health focus, more of a bringing our community aspect of Baylor to more universal scope, I think it's a good move for us.

What that means for students is that you are getting a better education, a more well-rounded education, you are not just a STEM student, you are a STEM student who has a passion for music and maybe has found that they like theater now. When you are an adult, maybe you are a physician, maybe you're a pharmacist, or maybe you're a journalist, you'll understand different scopes of life that you experience because you went to these different things and I think that's a good thing. It is expanding your worldview also. You may come into college thinking one way because you've only been exposed to that, being socialized into that by your parents, your friends, the way you lived back home but Baylor’s a different place and I've definitely changed since I've been here and it's been for the better.

Q. As a student at Baylor, what are some opportunities that pre health has been able to offer you that you feel has had an impact on your premed journey?

A. Pre-Health, not just the office but the community has been pivotal to my success. I think early on I had to make a decision of where my place was going to be in Baylor's community, and ultimately, I found that it would be in mentoring and also research. Those two disciplines fit what I wanted to do in my future and the pre health office, at first, I had to go out of my way to create a relationship with them, but it's for good reason because they have so many pre-health students at Baylor so it's hard to filter who is here to really make it to med school and who is trying to find their way and what they want to do right now. Whether that be med school or otherwise, and so freshman year was me trying to establish my networking and mentoring relationships, do well in classes, but afterwards I started going after internships, mostly through the pre health office and then I got involved in different scholars programs both through the pre health office and beyond and through those scholars programs I was able to do more national internships and that all added to my ability to make different connections across the nation, not just in Texas. I am an out-ofstate student, that is another minority component. I believe what was the most helpful was the community and the upperclassmen here. I have been very blessed and lucky to have some amazing mentors that helped pave the way for me. They worked tirelessly to make sure that I got to where I wanted to be. In regard to the pre health program itself, I think like any other program at any school, it needs work, but we all came here for a reason the program is amazing. As a senior looking back, I am very well prepared for medical school.

Granted I had to do a lot of soul searching along the way, and kind of work for myself a bit but with the track already in place and the people I met here and the experiences I've had here, I feel almost over prepared to go to med school in some ways. I think this place has really made it solidified in my brain that this is what I want to do and that is a super important thing for me to have discovered here at Baylor. As an out of state student, going back to that, I think with Baylor growing every year, they are going to get more and more out of state recruits/freshmen, and I think the program will have to meet that demand as well. It was quite challenging for me to get the proper mentoring that I needed as an out of state premed applying to medical schools, what that looks like exactly, but I think that just comes with the time. The pre-health office learns we all make mistakes, so over time the program will just get better and better. They are very responsive to feedback and I love the concept that if a group of students wants to do something like create an organization, they can. The pre-health office is pretty supportive of that. Now that I think about it, a new surgical organization started this year. Every couple of years or so, a new organization appears. Students come in every couple of years having a new outlook, a new drive to do something. If you are so willing, you are able to do it. It is awesome that we have these opportunities here. Baylor is large enough, so you do not know everyone every day, you don’t meet the same people every day, but still small enough that you make a community, you create your own community and make your own little pockets. And it is within those pockets that you actually thrive and succeed because you are making a lot of meaningful connections with your peers.

Q. Are you a part of any organizations whose purpose is to help minorities or not necessarily?

A. Not anymore, maybe freshman year I was more so because I was trying to find my place but now as a senior it is more so me trying to help other students through my own means.

Q. How have any of the organizations that you are in helped you?

A. So I spoke a little about MSO, I think you can extrapolate from that too. They basically filled me as a freshman and sophomore, and I went back and served as president sophomore through junior year because we are on an off year, so it is not a full school year. That was a whole tumultuous time serving as president as a sophomore but after that I realized MSO didn’t have an academics chapter so I made it my mission to create the academics chapter at MSO because I realized that all these different orgs are great but I think students tend to just stick with one after a while. Like in MAPS, if you find your home freshman year you stick with it, and if your organization is not accommodating for a couple different factors of pre health, some of those students, if they’re not a part of another organization might miss out so what I felt was that we needed more of an academic focus so I created that.

So far, it has been okay, it needs some growth but that will come with time. Medical mentors has been one of my favorite things I have done at Baylor. I truly think that one of my purposes in the future is to mentor whether it be later on in my medical career helping younger medical students. I love doing it. I love giving back, serving, not just the community but also the people within your own branch, always learning from your peers and your mentees is a good thing, it helps the system overall. That is been a really awesome thing that I have been a part of. Putting on workshops, doing one on ones, I meet with freshmen throughout senior year. I meet with students probably once or twice a week at this point, both new and recurring freshmen that I have been mentoring that have been really rewarding.

Also, in some of my other scholars’ programs, those have been super important for me to grow as an advocate for myself and my own science. Scholars programs like Hillis, and some of the other ones offered at Baylor, have allowed me to grow as a scientist but also an advocate for ethical research. How do we properly conduct research in a morally sound way? There's a lot of research being done in the world that’s not always up to par, and I've loved being at Baylor because it has given me this mission to always conduct yourself with grace and respect the people that are around you, that's what I want to bring in to my future, the clinic work that I do and the research that I’ll embark on.

Final Regards: Anjali Ravee

There are not enough words that can describe the level of accomplishment that Anjali has been able to obtain in her four years at Baylor. From the beginning, Anjali made it her mission to be as active as possible within the Baylor Sciences. She was clear and concise and wasted no time getting after her dream. Along the way she made connections with faculty and professors who have assisted her in elevating her platform as a Medical School applicant. Her steadfastness envelopes the intent that every Baylor pre-med applicant should have when they are truly passionate about the life of Medicine and bioscience.