Discovering the Health Sciences at McGill University

McGill_Discovery_DaysLast week, LCC students attended Discovery Days in Health Sciences at McGill University. The Discovery Days are one-day workshops that offer secondary students an opportunity to learn about the many career options in medicine and the health sciences. Here is what two students had to say about the experience:

On December 7, a group of LCC students attended the McGill Discovery Days to learn about different fields of health sciences. We arrived just in time to see the first keynote speaker, Madhu Pa, who spoke about global health and how you don’t have to be a doctor or scientist to be a part of the global health movement. The speech was very interesting and inspiring.

Next we had our individual workshops. My chosen workshops were Drug Discovery and Disease Detectives. For the first workshop, the speaker was a specialist in all aspects of drug discovery and development. She explained the process of the discovery, development and testing of the medicine. I stayed behind to ask questions and received advice that was well worth having less time to eat lunch. After lunch, we went to our second workshop where the speaker focused on the study of epidemiology and its origin. After discussing this, she sent us on a scavenger hunt in groups of five that was designed so that we could apply our recently acquired knowledge about the spread of diseases. Despite our enthusiastic effort, we came in second in discovering which disease was “spreading in the university.”

The concluding activity was the “Health Pros Tell All.” Instead of a single keynote speaker, a panel of five speakers, who were specialists in their own fields, told their captivating career stories in health sciences. If you are interested in going into health sciences or you’d like to get an idea of what those types of careers are, I’d recommend you take advantage of this opportunity next year! – James Galbraith ’18

Today, accompanied by Ms. Owen, along with eight other LCC students, I attended the McGill Discovery Days of Health Sciences. The event was split into three sections: a keynote speaker, workshop 1 and workshop 2. The opening speaker, an epidemiologist, spoke about the idea of global health. With the world becoming increasingly “flat” (meaning accessible to all), more health risks are starting to form, such as transmission of diseases as well as global warming. For example, there are over 4,000 airports in the world and 40,000 flight connections, all causing this huge epidemic. The speaker mentioned certain fields that would help in this problem like communications, business, science research and politics. This presentation taught us that there are numerous fields other than medicine, like the ones previously mentioned, that could equally help improve the world’s health.

After this, I attended two different workshops. The first one was dentistry. During this course, we met up at the McGill School of Dentistry where three fourth-year students greeted us. We participated in an abundance of activities that immersed us in the study of teeth. For example, we got to interpret x-ray scans, learn about the effects of sugar on the teeth and make our own moldings! The second workshop I attended was on occupational therapy. Once again, we were asked to partake in dynamic activities in order to fully understand some of the stuff these doctors do. We got to make our own finger cast out of thermoplastics and even try a computer that works through face sensors. All in all, I had a superb time. These hands-on activities gave me a real sense of what working as a health scientist would be like. As well, talking to students from the McGill program helped answer all of my questions and doubts. Seeing students that are not that much older than me proved that you can succeed in what you want to be, no matter which path you take to get there. In my opinion, the underlining theme of the event was “find something that you are passionate about and then work as hard as you can to achieve it.” This is precisely what I am going to do… – Abigail Shine ’17

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