About Me

Hi there!

​

My name is Amishi and I am a current senior studying Public Health Sciences with a writing minor. Since I was a young girl, I have had two main passions in life: science and writing. Historically, the two are irreconcilable. My high school heavily instilled in its students a mentality I do not agree with. It was ingrained in us that we had to be really good at one thing and put all our energy towards that one thing. This gave room to major stereotyping. I was taking 4-6 AP classes a year and quickly became integrated in the "STEM inclined students." This became a looking glass self moment; people saw me as someone who was decently good at science and that became my internal and external identity. Meanwhile, I had a hidden journal filled with poetry, daily thoughts, and embarrassing quotes. I never admit to anyone that I loved writing as it seemingly went against the academic interests that defined me. 

​

It wasn't until college that I started to share my writing and feel comfortable sharing it. I realized writing was a form integrated in everything we do as pre-med students, but the issue is that nobody in STEM fields enjoy the writing they do. Rather, they get caught up in the technicalities. It was upon this realization that I picked up a job in the statistics department to improve integration of science and writing by assigning short narrative prompts instructing students to explain a statistics concept in layperson terms. This position allowed me to quickly learn that the writing I knew and loved was inaccessible to many in STEM fields due to the rigidity with which writing is taught when we are children. I started to utilize a new approach in my office hours; I would have students tell me their ideas as a story. Anyone sitting there could tell you how much engagement improved upon using a storytelling approach to even the dullest of concepts - linear regressions, confidence intervals. Thus, came about the passion I like to call "writing about science in non-scientific ways." 

​

When my grandma was battling breast cancer and a double-knee replacement, I found myself writing a lot to help cope with the emotional toll of seeing a family member in the hospital. Then, my family found out my uncle had multiple stage four tumors in his brain. I found myself journaling more than I ever have. My parents seemed to only come to us with bad news about his health. The brain tumor have him a type of aphasia - he would look at objects and confidently call them the wrong name. The doctors at this point stopped seeing him seriously and he was no longer a stakeholder in his own health. There was a constant burning question at the back of my mind everyday: is anybody asking him how he truly feels? This experience is what led me to explore the field of narrative medicine and the benefits it possesses. 

​

In terms of my career, I hope to one day be an OB/GYN. The field itself has seen a lack of narrative-centric practice, and I believe in the power of using a patient's story to drive the trajectory of their care. I have listed several areas of the field of women's health that are of interest to me and could benefit from a more narrative-focused lens in care. 

​

​