How PFW helped guide an alumna to her true vocation

Being a doctor is all Kayla Chin ever really dreamed of, saying at age 5 that's what she was going to do. It's a vision that stuck with her through middle school, while attending New Haven High School, and as a biology major at Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Chin, B.S. '16, has never doubted her calling, though she did decide while attending medical school to switch from being a cardiothoracic surgeon.

"I rotated into neurosurgery, and I was like, `Oh, this is amazing!'" Chin recalled. "I could get there at 5 a.m. every day and work until 11 p.m. and not get tired of it. This was it. I had found my people. There are definitely times when it's not fun, but I'm also just so thankful that I get to do this job."

Currently, Chin is in the fifth of a seven-year physician residency at Southern Illinois University Medicine Hospital in Springfield, Illinois. After that, she'll serve another year of a fellowship before she can look for her first long-term home.

After being named valedictorian at New Haven, Chin received a full scholarship to attend what was then called IPFW. There were other options, but staying home was the smart choice because she knew her debt would skyrocket through medical school. Being a Mastodon also allowed her something of a normal college experience, as Chin was a member of the cheerleading squad and joined the immunology research lab of Elliott Blumenthal, associate professor.

"I got to travel with the basketball team, and the cheerleaders were kind of like another little family away from my family," Chin said. "The whole thing was just a great experience."

Following graduation, Chin took a gap year to prepare to take the Medical College Admission Test and worked at a local hospital as a lab tech in the sterile processing department, which taught her even more respect for the nurses and technicians she works with now. She was also a substitute teacher and a cheerleading assistant coach.

"PFW was a place where no counselor or professor tried to push me into a certain direction," Chin said. "I was free to study what I wanted and how I wanted. My advisors were there to help guide me on the path I knew I wanted to go on, but never pressured me to stick with a certain course schedule or pick certain classes. I even minored in religious studies because the environment was so conducive to exploring and learning.

"I felt that that sort of guided freedom really has carried forward into how I go about learning. And this has been truly instrumental in a field like medicine where you truly never stop learning. There are constantly new medications, new ways to treat diseases, and ever-changing recommendations within all of medicine. The idea that learning doesn't have to be strict has really helped pave the way for how I navigate my studies now."

She also developed tremendous friendships, which Chin said she maintains today, adding that PFW may be on a small campus, but it has a "big heart."

After her gap year, just three days before classes started, Chin found out she'd been accepted to Indiana School of Medicine-Terre Haute.

"I had to call my job to quit, say goodbye to my friends, and I called my parents to say we needed to start looking for a place to live in Terre Haute," Chin said. "We drove down the next day to find a place that got me through the next two years that I was there."

She then spent two years in Indianapolis before starting her residency.

Residents are limited to working 80 hours per week, but some weeks can include 100 hours as long as the following week is 60. Chin said she tries to grab a couple of hours sleep when working overnight shifts seven days a month. She usually receives two weekends off per month. Even when she's working a "normal" day shift, her phone can ring at any time during the night because of an emergency.

"I live off caffeine," she said. "They try to teach you to be able to operate and function with a lack of sleep. Sometimes you have to be able to wake from a dead sleep and go operate. I know the utility of it, and sometimes it doesn't feel good going through it, but I feel like at a moment's notice I could be ready to go in and do anything.

"Seven years is long, but you would want someone who is operating on your brain to be well-trained so it's a lot of learning crammed into a short amount of time."

Surgeries can last 16 hours, but no day is the same, and anything can happen at any time, so she better be prepared.

"It's OK, because I know without a doubt this is what I'm supposed to be doing," Chin said. "I can't imagine doing anything else."