Dispatch from a Baylor Summer Fellow | Hailey Gleason

My time in Argentina has completely flipped my perception of the medical profession, both inwardly and out. Going into the summer, I had fairly set notions on what my career would look like. I wanted to complete my thesis related to autism spectrum disorder, graduate from Baylor, work for some time in ABA therapy while applying to medical schools, gain a pediatric residency, and then eventually fulfill a fellowship in developmental pediatrics. 

While that option still attracts me, my mind has been opened to so many more possibilities. After viewing my first surgeries in Mendoza, I realized how enamored I was. I had previously assumed that surgery wouldn’t be for me: that it was something I couldn’t handle. But watching it first-hand, across the world, made me realize how much universal value there was, even though I had absolutely no idea what was going on. My Spanish proficiency may have improved tenfold during my semester, but between the masks over the surgeons’ faces and their rapid discussions of topics I know nothing about even in my own native language, comprehension was proving to be difficult. However, it didn’t matter if words were failing me, because I could feel in the air the intensity of the moment, and the joy of the surgeons to be granting new life to their patients. 

The doctors also wanted me to feel a part of it too, allowing me to lean on them to glance over shoulders and take in the full view of the table. I truly cannot wait to experience more like that, especially in a language I can fully take part in, whether that be when I return back to Latin America again after achieving full Spanish-proficiency or in an operating room in the United States. However, I have not changed my perception of working with children. My time in bilingual school will be some I cherish most, and it is a great reason for the change in goal for my gap year’s focus. 

I feel a wire between Argentina and myself now, pulling me back in, and I hope to spend more time with more kids like those I met this summer. And after becoming a doctor, because that is one more dream of mine that will never change, I want to be able to come back to hospitals like I visited and help. They gave me some of my first real tastes of medicine, and in that the love of relationship between doctor and patients that I never saw when shadowing in the United States, so it will forever be my mission to return and to keep growing in my own education and aiding in the education of others along the way. 

Hailey Gleason (Senior, University Scholar)