What advice would you give a prospective med student?

I would suggest that you seek out some of the most pertinent problems facing our society, as it pertains to medicine, and ask yourself about which of them you identify most with. Is it a specific sociocultural health disparity? Is it a disease process yet to be cured? Is it a component of medical training/education that you’ve noted as improvable? This is a core question that will act as a cornerstone and driver for the passion in medicinal practice that you will feed over the decades of your career, and a critically important one to ask now and again in your development as a physician.

Why did you choose Long School of Medicine?

I was a part of a BS/MD Program with UTSA here in San Antonio, so I didn’t “choose” the Long School of Medicine, per se. However, I would choose the LSOM if I wanted to have a diversifiable medical education that hinged on a multidisciplinary, team-based approach to healing and health maintenance with particularly high exposure to Latino and Spanish-speaking patients.

Describe the Long School of Medicine in three words…

Dedicated. Diverse. Developmental.

The Long School of Medicine has always shown an incredible dedication to its matriculants, with particular impressions having been made in the recent months of the COVID-19 Pandemic. My classmates and I have felt incredibly informed and strongly supported as we have temporarily transitioned to new methodologies of medical education. In addition, the diverse student and patient populations afforded by the environment within which the LSOM operates creates opportunities abound for student learners to enrich their understanding of each other and their future patients. Furthermore, the developmental processes utilized by the design of the LSOM curricula and adjunct programs in public health, medical humanities, medical education, and clinical research are a holistic network of enriching opportunities designed to equip us as graduates to tackle problems broader than the medicinal context of our patients’ health.

What is your favorite playlist, and why?

Throughout med school, I have always fallen back on the Bonobo Radio on Spotify. Pertinent to the Grammy-nominated Brit, Simon Green, this ever-updating collection of the electronic-jazz artist’s mixes and those of instrumentalists alike echoes a decades-long career of passion for complexity, creativity, and worldly-foci. This passion is one I identify with pursuing medicinally, and this playlist always puts me in the mood to push the boundaries of my development as a healer. It’s perfect for those long study sessions, the short breaks in between, and the sunsets you catch on the way home from campus.

-Garrett Kneese ’22

Photo By: Brandie Jenkins, Senior Photographer