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Evidence of Learning #1

For my first Evidence of Learning I decided to focus on an article I found about genetic counseling. The article used the story of one woman to describe the benefit of speaking with a genetic counselor. This woman had breast cancer when she was 37 years old and now at 60 years old she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her other breast. She felt very overwhelmed with another diagnosis of cancer but was more worried that her cancer was linked to her genetics and she did not want her three children to also develop cancer because of her. She wanted to obtain as much info concerning her cancer as possible so she turned to genetic testing but did not know what these tests could do for her so she contacted a genetic counselor.


Her genetic counselor started off by asking her about her family’s cancer history. After evaluating her family history and her previous cancer diagnosis, her genetic counselor expressed that she qualified for genetic testing. This test would identify the mutation that she inherited and explain her diagnosis. Situations like these happen to people all the time, all over the world and genetic counselors are there to answer all questions and provide support to their patients.


Genetic counselors work as a liaison between doctors and patients. Sometimes doctors don’t have the knowledge to answer all questions so then genetic counselors step in to fill in the gap. Through this article I learned that genetic counselors have a greater impact on the lives of others than I thought. Genetic counselors provide others with information that could potentially change their life and/or the lives of their families, which is a great responsibility.

Evidence of Learning: Text

Evidence of Learning #2

My journey to secure a mentor has been a bit challenging. From the beginning I even had some trouble finding contacts. I wasn’t really sure where genetic counselors work but I predicted that they would work in hospitals. At the beginning of the year I wanted to go into pediatric genetic counseling so I thought that I could call pediatricians and ask to be referred to a pediatric genetic counselor. Most pediatricians that I called did not know what a genetic counselor was and those who did told me to call genetics departments. I followed those instructions but only got 3 interviews. Since I didn’t have much luck finding contacts I decided to look for a national site for genetic counselors and found their national website. Then I went to their directory and found a tab where it gave me contact info for genetic counselors who were open to student contact. Through that resource I got a couple more contacts and found Ms.Reeves. I met with her and thought that she could be a potential mentor but when I asked her if she would be willing to mentor someone she explained that she felt like she was too new in the career to mentor someone. About 3 weeks later, I sat down with Mr.Pirtle and he told me to find and email at 15 new genetic counselors. I completed these emails and a few people responded but I got more activity than I had the whole year. 


One thing that I could have done better throughout this process would have been more proactive with looking for new contacts. After Ms.Reeves said that she was not ready to be a mentor I lost hope but I should have looked for more genetic counselors. If I had worked harder to find new contacts after Ms.Reeves then I would be in better shape to get a mentor at this point in the year.  Now I am more determined to get a mentor because I know now that it is harder to speak with genetic counselors than I thought.


Even though I had some trouble with finding a mentor, I have improved in some ways. I now know what I need to do to find people. I need to try to speak with as many people as possible instead of focusing on one person for weeks. I also am less nervous making phone calls and conducting interviews because over the past couple of weeks I have gotten a lot of practice doing so. At the beginning of the year, I got extremely nervous just calling genetic counselors but now I am less nervous and can talk to them more easily.

Evidence of Learning: Text

Evidence of Learning #3

On Monday 2/24, I conducted my first mentor meeting. I got the opportunity to shadow my mentor, Ms. Johnson, for a full day at Baylor Scott and White Health Dallas. The first part of the day consisted of meeting with two patients and a third patient towards the end of the day. They were not yet diagnosed with any genetically linked cancer. Ms. Johnson followed the same procedure that she did with the two patient clinics that I had observed the week before. She asked them about what they know so far/what their doctor has told them, gained information about their health history, asked about their surgical plan if applicable and started to build a pedigree. 

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After each of the patient clinics, Ms. Johnson asked me if I had any questions. One thing that I had noticed during these clinics is that she always asked if there is any Jewish ancestry in the patient’s family, so I asked her why she always asked that question. She replied that Jewish people are at an increased risk for having the BRCA mutation in their genes which causes a higher chance of a person to develop breast and ovarian cancer. One of the patients that we saw came to see a genetic counselor because her mother was diagnosed with Lynch Syndrome. This syndrome causes the individual to have a predisposition for certain cancers such as colon, pancreatic, and uterine/ovarian cancers. I also got to see how she makes pedigrees after meeting with a patient. She has an application on her computer that allows her to add or remove members to a family and write notes about each person such as: what their cause of death was or what kind of cancer they currently have. Lastly I got to meet two of her colleagues, Ms. Clifford and Ms. Burden. They are also clinical genetic counselors who seemed very eager to have me there. Unfortunately I did not get to speak with Ms. Burden much but Ms. Clifford asked me a couple of questions about school and told me a little bit about the lecture that they were holding later that day.

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After the two patients in the morning, we went to a lecture hall where different types of genetic counselors from Dallas came to listen to a lecture about Sarcomas. First a senior genetic counselor spoke about different types of sarcomas and how they go about handling sarcomas. After this genetic counselor was done, my mentor spoke about some genes/disorders associated with sarcomas and left them with some questions to think about and answer with their colleagues. I did not understand a lot of the jargon that they used, but it was still very interesting to learn about saromas and how they go about diagnosing/treating them. I got to meet a couple genetic counselors before the lecture; once I told them that I was a junior in high school, they said that I am very ahead of the game. This made me feel great because I love to get ahead early and be ready for the future. I also got to meet a prospective student and ask her a couple of questions. She just finished her undergrad program and now works as a lab tech at UT Southwestern. She plans to go apply to grad school this May but needs to take her GRE exam before she can apply. One thing that I was not 100% sure about was what kind of math do genetic counselors use. She said that they mostly use basic math, but in undergrad school they mostly use statistics and sometimes calculus. She also suggested that I look at what classes schools require for their undergrads to take. At the end of the lecture she gave me her phone number and email so that I could contact her with any question I have in the future.

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At the end of the day, I sat down with Ms. Johnson to debrief after our busy day. We talked about how they day was and she gave me some critiques on my Original Work. She suggested that instead of making a personality quiz, I should make some bullet points of questions for people to answer. This is because not all genetic counselors are the same and this way people can think about the questions more freely rather than being restricted to answer choices. Since I can only meet with her once a month, she gave me some things to research, two books to read, and a movie to watch during the month that I don't see her. The books that she gave me are written by women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer and a movie that documents the journey of a woman who gets diagnosed with cancer. I am very thankful that she allowed me to borrow these books and the movie so that I can gain a better understanding of the patient’s perspective of their breast cancer diagnosis.

Evidence of Learning: Text
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