Dr. Justin Shafa

This was the most interesting conference for me yet. It made me think about other fields in medicine. Until that point, I have been locked on for orthopedic surgery, but now I keep looking at new field of medicine every day. Him showing us all the tools that an interventional radiologist would use peaked my interest. I looked into it, but i decided that it wasn't for me. Dr. Shafa himself was a great guy. He kept the conference exciting and was very open minded with our questions and answering well. This was my first time moderating a conference as well. Nobody told me any criticism so I assume I did well, I guess. The only reason I was able to moderate well was because i had personal interest in the conference, and along with that my co-moderator, Samiha, was very helpful and carried the conversation when I couldn't. Overall it was a great conference and I really enjoyed it. I would like to thank Dr. Shafa for talking to us.

Damla Sahin/ Sal Leto

I felt like these two conferences were polar opposites. When we talked with Damla, she was told us about her experiences, but always linked back to us. She would makes us feel like we were the important guests, not her. She asked about how we were dealing with the quarantine and how diffrent our senior experience was than other normal years. It was also our first conference in quarantine, which was definitely weird for me. I'd never thought that i'd end up taking my classes on FaceTime from home, but here we are.  She was a very nice and polite person, and opened up another option for me of going to med-school abroad, which i never considered before.
Sal felt like it was a business meeting or like the professional development the teachers always tells about that get us half-days. I didn't disagree with the things he was saying, people don't have to go to college to be successful, but it is a higher chance of success than not attending at all. I have respect for him in his efforts to keep youth off the streets and get them working and educated. I feel that it is a major problem of some urban cities like Paterson, Detroit, LA etc. He was a very inspiring guy and I would like to talk to him in the future, after college perhaps.