It's like I've had time over the past few years to both reflect on the new class and my current class. And I really do think that there's a sense of vibrancy. People here like to have fun; they like to be connected. And I think that sense of community is is what drew me here, and it's something that is really important to me.

The first one that comes to mind is woke. You know, however you want to take that "woke," but within that, multifaceted.

There's a huge amount of student initiatives that are driven by classmates and colleagues who are inspiring and are thinking about medical response from a social and a psychological kind of viewpoint. And so I really appreciate that, and I think it just feels really welcoming as someone who, you know, does think that things should be multidisciplinary, especially in healthcare, to actually like have Sinai create programs and funding and money, and give students money to do things with. That, to me, speaks of actual commitment and action.

It means that Mount Sinai really values non-traditional students, people from different backgrounds, and really bringing them together to inform medicine, you know, the classroom and the clinic. And bringing these different backgrounds, these different perspectives, to really not only help each other learn, but also improves the care for our patients in the future.

My roles in my student groups have really helped me connect with other students in my class in a way that I think is a little bit more meaningful and engaging than just what we get in the classroom. And so I think I've been able to learn a lot about my, you know, my classmates' strengths. What are, you know, interesting treasures about them, things in their past prior to Sinai that I didn't know. And I think it fosters a really collaborative environment that I think is important for when you're on a medical team.

You have people who are international students, people from the rural South, people from Connecticut, people from down the road, like two blocks over. And so I think that there's a huge diversity both in terms of interest, like intellectual interest, both in terms of extracurricular interests, and I think that that really does bring a certain energy and quality to a campus and to a community that really can't be replaced.

I loved being a part of my class because I have my lived experiences, and they have their lived experiences. And sometimes it's hard to be in spaces where those voices come together, and there's not necessarily a space to kind of like grapple with that, but I think that this is that space where we can have the hard conversations and have the critical conversations. And you may not always come out with a conclusion on the other side, but you learn something. And I learned something from my classmates every day.