Session 239 Dr. Andrea Tooley shares her journey from premed to current Ophtho resident. She didn't know a lot about the premed journey, but fought to inform herself. Andrea has a YouTube channel called A Doctor in the House. She shares her journey to medicine including chasing down anybody in scrubs and the mistakes she made, the successes she had, and everything in between. [01:20] A Love for Ophthalmology and Her Flying Gig Having always loved science since late middle school, Dr. Toole already thought medicine would be a good career for her by mid high school and considering she never had any exposure to health care growing up and not having any physicians in her family. But she always wanted to have that secure career that offers certainty and being able to interact with people so medicine was what she thought fit her personality. As to why she wanted security, Andrea has always been a planner who has always mapped out her future which she thinks is an innate character. To test the waters whether medicine was right for her, she has done shadowing with a few people early in high school including a general surgeon and a nephrologist that was set up through her school that had kind of a career day but they could actually go to work with some of these people. Still it was little exposure but it wasn't until eleventh grade when she got her pilot license and she flew airplanes in high school that she met this pilot who told her about the ophthalmology-related nonprofit organization he was involved with. Upon reading about the organization, Andrea finally found her aha moment and thought it was what she wanted to do with her life. From then on, she started reading more about ophthalmology and shadowing more surgeons. But it was when she fell in love with the organization's concept of helping people see and eradicating blindness that she made her big declaration that it was what she wanted to do with her life. Andrea initially didn't know about ophthalmology but when she started reading about what the organization was doing, she couldn't imagine anything better than giving someone back their vision. And that to her was the essence of what an amazing career would be. International work was also another component Andrea was interested in and so she thought a doctor would be the best job ever. Andrea's stepfather who flew airplanes encouraged her to try it and she loved it. So she got her license in high school and flew a little in college. Once she got to medical school, she simply found it impractical to fly an airplane. Considering how expensive it is and knowing it wasn't her first priority at that moment, she had to let it go. She hasn't flown in years but she would love to get back to it one day. [07:25] Choosing a College Her decision to be a doctor didn't actually play any part into choosing where she wanted to go to college. In hindsight, she wished she had been more strategic about it. With lack of guidance, her dad being an architect and a musician mom, neither of them had any great graduate school-type advice for her. She also went to a tiny school in Indiana so they didn't have any big school-type counseling for choosing a college. She basically didn't think about it, more so, not even knowing how to think about it. As a result, Andrea applied to a bunch of random schools in Florida, New York, and Indiana where she ended up going to Butler University in Indianapolis. She actually got a scholarship that was a full ride to any Indiana school but she got wait listed at Notre Dame and felt devastated leaving her with Butler as her only option thinking she wasn't going to turn down a full ride. But what seemed to be the worst point of her life turned out to be the greatest thing since she enjoyed every minute of it. She found that a smaller liberal arts school fit her personality so much better than a bigger school. Not having any prior introspection into all this, Andrea was thankful everything ended up well for her. But if