Sometimes you may feel like you’re out of control, that you may be faced with systemic barriers that you can’t do anything about. Advocate for yourself, advocate for your community if it’s a community wide issue, and you may be able to do something about it.
Born and raised in Syria, Abed Baiad is 23 years old and studying Medicine in the Class of 2024.
Describe yourself in one sentence.
I am a person who loves to eat, exercise and moderately socialize.
Tell us about your journey to medical/dental school.
I honestly never really saw myself doing anything else [other than medicine]. What sparked my initial interest was that my mom had an autoimmune disease early on that was quite severe and I spent a lot of time at the hospital. I saw how the doctors handled it, and their impact on us and the family. In high school, I liked science, with my favourite subjects being chemistry, math and biology. I decided to explore those interests further and thus I started out at Concordia University in the general Biology undergraduate program. I then transferred to McGill and completed the rest of my undergrad in the Biochemistry program here. During my undergraduate studies, my involvement in research and the courses I took solidified my interest in medicine. And when the time came, I knew that I wanted to apply. I graduated in Winter 2020, and here I am now!
What has been your most impactful or memorable experience since starting medical/dental school?
Being elected as class president last fall certainly meant a lot to me. I had never really put myself out there before; I [only] had some leadership experiences in the context of clubs and some work experiences. I was never a president or anything. When we started in the Fall [of 2020], the opportunity didn’t really jump out to me right away but I knew a part of me really wanted to do it. However, I wasn’t very comfortable with building a platform and asking people to vote for me. At some point late during the nomination period, I was listening to a talk from a doctor who was giving advice to incoming medical students. And he was saying that, if he had to give one piece of advice, it would be “You can’t be shy! When I am interviewing people for residency and I see that they are shy, it tells me that they are not able to communicate their ideas. And this is something I do look for when choosing residents.” For some reason, even though it was not relevant to the student elections, it kind of resonated with me, and I decided to give it a shot. The rationale behind it was that I had a couple of ideas that I wanted to see being implemented in our curriculum. I thought this position would give me a solid platform to convey these ideas to the faculty, such as protected time during the Fundamentals of Medicine and Dentistry (FMD) preclerkship component and facilitated communication through a central complaint platform. These were some ideas that I had in mind to make things better and that I have been pushing and presenting to the faculty this past year. I hope they have been successful and that they have been helpful to our class.
In your opinion, what has been the most impactful discovery in medical/dentistry?
Well there is a lot, but one thing that I enjoyed reading about was the discovery of insulin. I think that has been impactful. I read a book called literally “The Discovery of Insulin” by Michael Bliss and it tells the story of this great discovery.
What is something little known about you?
I would say that I was an extremely shy kid. I had very specific friends groups, like one or two friends that I was close to, but overall I was really shy. I was also kind of an obese kid, so that played a role in being self-conscious, not being comfortable in my own shell. I think I only overcame it when I was 16 or 17 years old in high school, where I kind of got in better shape, met the right friends and got out of my comfort zone. People now think that I am social and whatnot, but truth be told, it was a thing that I had to overcome as a kid. I’m moderately-very social right now, but it depends on the day you know.
What is one experience that you have had that you feel others can learn from? One story you would like to comment on?
This is maybe delving on into too much detail, but as I mentioned, I grew up in Syria and I immigrated to Canada a couple of years ago and I wasn’t a Canadian citizen until recently. In undergrad, I secured a research internship in California at Stanford University. It was unpaid, but I managed to also secure funding for it independently. I won two grants to go, and it was set for the summer and everything was good and the last step was to go to the US consulate and get a visa. That was supposed to be the easiest step because everything was set and I had all the proper documentation from the host university.
At the time, there was a travel ban in place, but the rule was that Canadian permanent residents (and I was a Canadian permanent resident at that time) could get a waiver from the travel ban. However, when I went into the US consulate for my final appointment, I was automatically denied visa because of the travel ban. Although I qualified for a waiver, it turned out that the waiver process takes at least 12 months to obtain (which was not known or mentioned before). I was denied a visa on the spot.
On that day I just felt devastated. I felt like I was denied an opportunity solely because of my background which I absolutely couldn’t do anything about. There was merit associated to securing that internship and there were financial barriers I was able to overcome with the grants, but this is something I couldn’t change or do anything about. I don’t want to say devastated, because at the end of the day it was just an internship, but it made me feel frustrated internally. But here is what others can learn, since the story has a happy ending.
Following this incident, I did a lot of research online and spoke to people from McGill, and I sensed that there was some glimpse of hope. I found some documents online, of how one can accelerate their waiver process from the travel ban based on few cases. I ended up writing a letter to the US consulate outlining why I am eligible for a waiver. It was I think 6 pages outlining why I should deserve a waiver based on documentations that I found. I attached a letter from my supervisor and from the faculty at McGill to back up my claims. I sent it and then a month later I got a visa and managed to go on the internship.
It basically taught me that sometimes you may feel like you’re out of control, that you may be faced with systemic barriers that you can’t do anything about. I know it sounds cliché, but don’t give up, try your best and you may come up with something. Advocate for yourself, advocate for your community if it’s a community wide issue, and you may be able to do something about it.
This was one of the reasons I wanted to be at McGill and that I chose to stay at McGill for medical school. Throughout that experience, McGill stood by me, not just with the travel ban process, but also with the funding, because like I mentioned it was unpaid. But McGill supported me financially, they supported me through this, and I thought you know what I want to be part of this community, I want to continue being here and contribute to it in some ways.
What is something you wish you knew before entering medical/dental school?
It is harder than you think. I went in with a naïve perspective, that since I did an undergraduate degree and since [medical school] is just pass or fail, I can relatively relax. But three-four weeks into the curriculum, you realize that no, you do need to study hard. It is pass/fail but there is a lot of content and a lot of work. So one thing that I wish I knew was that go and be prepared, you need to put in the work obviously. Just because you have had previous experiences, that might have made you confident about yourself, doesn’t mean that you don’t need to work hard every step of the way. Always do your best to improve your education.
In my head I knew that there was difficulty with medical school obviously, but I thought maybe that comes with clerkship. Which is true, I am still pretty confident that the difficult parts come with clerkship but the pre-clerkship component is also difficult and needs work that must be put into it.
Have you come across any additional resource that could be useful to study?
I wish I knew, I hear about a lot but I don’t get the chance to do many of them! But people use multiple resources like Osmosis, Boards & Beyond, Pathoma etc. I hear these terms being thrown around, I personally haven’t used these resources but I do plan on one day hopefully in the next block to explore these other options.
Do you have any advice you would like to give to future cohorts of medical/dental students?
As cliché as it sounds, focus on yourself. It is easy to compare yourself to others and feel intimidated. If you are in CEGEP you will feel the same way, if you are in undergrad you will feel the same way. You will be surrounded by hundreds of students and a lot of students look like they have everything figured out, [they are] on top of everything, [they are] getting the highest grades and you will naturally feel intimidated. You may feel insufficient. Do not look at that, literally just focus on yourself, do your best and if you feel confident about how far you have come and how well you are doing - that is what matters! If you are going to compare yourself to everybody, it is never going to be healthy, it is never going to work, whether you are in high school, undergraduate or medical school. Especially in medical school, since so many wonderful people are accepted, and everyone has done something great in their previous journey to medicine so it is easy to compare yourself to others, but try not to. Obviously, use whatever you need to as a source of inspiration, if you find good examples and role models and whatnot, but do not let it get to you in the sense that you get intimidated.
What is the funniest way that you’ve been injured?
The first time I went skiing, I didn’t take a lesson and went with friends that were skiing since they were two years old. They undermined how difficult it will be to learn how to ski for the first time. So I went on with them on a difficult ski slope right away, it was -40 ℃, it was freezing cold. I got off the chair lift a bit too early, but I didn’t fall on snow, but rather the hard part before the chair lift. And I basically fell on my left thigh/hip and it bruised really badly, and it kept going. I ended up going to the ER afterwards, after having fallen on it continuously since I don’t know how to ski. I spent the night in the ER, and went home with a bruised hip the next day. It was nothing too serious, just a bruised hip, but it was bruised for four weeks and I couldn’t sleep on it for a while. So if you ever want to ski, just take a lesson don’t succumb to peer pressure, and take a proper lesson and learn how to do it the proper way.
I didn’t even know that bunny slopes were a thing the first time that I went, it was terrible. But I went the year after, and learnt how to ski properly - although I didn’t take a lesson - I spent a lot of time on the bunny slopes. It became comfortable skiing, and now I think I can ski well.
What are some of your favorite activities outside of medical school?
Outside of the pandemic context, I enjoy eating a lot and exploring the different cafés and restaurants in Montreal. There’s something called café hopping where you explore the different cafés, and especially if you are studying you need to move around a lot. It is something I enjoy a lot (pre-covid), something I quite like Montreal.
I also love running, especially at night, the streets are emptier and there is a quietness to it.
Do you recommend any food or restaurant?
That’s a hard question, which depends on what you like. If you like chicken, there’s ma poule mouillée, where you can get Portuguese chicken poutine. One year it was rated second best restaurant in Canada by Yelp. I realized then that my preferences were validated! You can put that as my poutine recommendation. It is in the plateau, near Parc La Fontaine.
Note: The above is a direct transcript from a live interview with Abed Baiad conducted by the Resonance Humans team.