> about me <
I go by Britt (she/her) and my roots start in Boring, Oregon— yep, it's a real place! I have spent most of my life surrounded by forests and rain in Oregon, so moving to Arizona for medical school introduced a whole new world to me. I love the wildlife here and screech pretty pathetically over how cute every single reptile can be. I feel nostalgic during monsoon season and still never use an umbrella.
I left my small town to go to Portland Community College and figure out how college worked because, frankly, I had no idea. No one in my family had ever tried to get a Bachelor’s Degree before. Initially, my family did not like the idea that I was going to college and I left on pretty bad terms shortly after I graduated high school. They’ve since come around and accepted my choices though.
While living and working in Portland, Oregon I was lucky to meet and hug Rojo the Therapy Llama many times throughout his long life.
At the time, I absolutely knew that I wanted to study brains and behavior, and maybe become a physician someday. The spark was lit since early childhood: I was utterly fascinated by how reality was constructed differently by different people depending on their mental health and experiences. My mentor/karate teacher gave me a safe place to live and helped me start on my feet while I figured out college. At PCC, I was met with a lot of supportive faculty members and really good information that helped me bolster my basic science education and transfer to a university. I built lifelong friendships and found family there among the PCC Library crew, where I worked as a work-study library assistant and was later hired on as a library technician. Around the same time, I started becoming involved in the amazing bike community in Portland through Pedalpalooza rides.
At Portland State University, I completed my honors research thesis under the mentorship of Dr. Kenneth Stedman in the Center for Life in Extreme Environments in which I characterized viral genome mutations that could expand host range or affect host/virus interactions in extremophile archaea. I also served as president of the Neuroscience Club and helped build a strong hub for undergraduate neuroscience in the absence of a neuroscience major at PSU. The public neuroscience journal club Research in Review that I launched as a student leader is still active today— I am so immensely proud of my neuro-great-great-grandkids and the amazing things they’ve accomplished over the years!
During and after college, I was a science educator through an internship at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry where I discovered a passion for translating scientific jargon into normal people talk, typically through demonstrations involving fire, explosions, and puns. I saw the amazing things that happen from combining my art with scientific education and science communication.
I went through a lot of terrible stuff from 2014-2016 including multiple brain injuries and getting hit by a car. I fought hard to take care of myself, prepare for medical school, and graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biology in 2016. My family and friends, especially in the BIRRDSONG TBI support group, got me through the worst of it.
Celebrating Star Trek vs. Star Wars, as well as Prince vs. Bowie, became a yearly tradition in my life thanks to Pedalpalooza. LLAP!
I applied for medical school fresh after graduation and didn’t get a single interview. I was drowning in student debt, struggling with my health, and felt totally crushed, but kept putting one foot in front of the other because I’m really stubborn (and sort of a badass). There was a silver lining to some of the awful stuff: an eventual monetary settlement from getting hit by the reckless driver helped me pay off medical debt and student loans, so I no longer had to send every bit of my leftover paychecks towards minimum payments. Even though it wasn’t a lot of money by most standards, it helped stabilize my life tremendously and seek more opportunities in research and other fields to buff up my next application to medical school.
In 2017, I joined the lab of Dr. David Ellison at Oregon Health and Science University as a lab manager where we studied kidney disease and hypertension in addition to kidney damage caused by organ transplant drugs like tacrolimus. I worked really hard, learned to never skip breakfast if you’re going to do simple but important lab bench math, and had the opportunity to share co-authorship and first-authorship on scientific publications with some incredible teammates.
I re-applied to medical school in 2018, before anything was published, but still got a handful of interviews. With financial help from special folks who really believed in me, I was able to cast a wider net and apply to way more schools than my first cycle. My interview cycle was the most distance I ever traveled in the United States and the first time I’d ever been to the east coast.
Of all the schools I interviewed at, the warm community at UA made the school one of my top choices. I was wait-listed and put on alternate lists at every school and the waiting process plus constant uncertainty was horrendous. It really deteriorates your mental health. Then, in May 2019, I was officially accepted into the MD-PhD program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine - Tucson! It was a total dream come true.
Shoutout to my special family who saw my struggles and helped make it all happen: Lily, Mary, and Tony.
Now, I’m completing the first two years of medical school, then I will enter my PhD research years. After I finish my PhD, I will complete the final two years of medical school and then you will have to call me Doctor Doctor Britt!
Currently at UA, I am the president of our American Medical Women's Association (AMWA) branch as well as Co-Director for MedPride. Through both groups, I am committed to confronting health inequalities and injustices faced by women and the LGBTQIA+ community. MedPride has united student voices against some terrible anti-LGBTQIA legislation which, as part of a tremendous community effort, helped lead to bills being totally tabled. My AMWA branch has also presented a poster about the various laws that restrict reproductive healthcare access in Arizona. At UA, my voice as an advocate was encouraged by my mentors and loudly blossomed during my first year of medical school.
Once my PhD years are in full swing, I hope my research will lead to improved care after traumatic brain injury. In particular I am dedicated to bettering women's health after concussion, treating (or preventing) chronic changes after brain injury beyond the acute injury, and studying how our brains evolved to heal (and not heal) themselves. I’m also still super stoked about viruses and can talk your ear off about them, but neurovirology is sort of a niche and will probably have to wait until post-doc. :)
Outside of doing all my med school stuff, I love to go on adventures by bike, play sci-fi/roleplaying games, watch horror movies, and build blanket forts. I’m happiest outside, so I usually try to do homework, drawing, or writing somewhere without any walls. For as long as I can remember, I have created fictional stories through drawing and writing to cope with the world and I hope to post more of my work here. My favorite anime/manga is Ghost in the Shell, Watamote, and Parasyte. My favorite Netflix series are The Witcher and Castlevania which are both utter perfection. As a kid my favorite game was Baldur’s Gate and I have been a lifelong Bioware fangirl. I think strategy games (both video games and boardgames) are also really fun!
IN SUMMARY:
Some parts of my life have really sucked and I feel like there is some kind of otherworldly reason why grit rhymes with Britt. Without a stupid amount of luck and tons of support from friends I made along the way, I wouldn’t be here today.
I know what it’s like to struggle to self-support through college, after college, and the uncertainty involved with it. That’s why I’m dedicated to helping first-generation and low income folks reach their dreams because medicine absolutely needs their presence and input. Science does, too!
PHOTO CREDIT: The cover photograph was taken by the great and wonderful photographer and kidney researcher Jonathan Nelson, PhD.