Match Day Q&A: Chandler Brown

What made you decide you wanted to be a doctor?

I was never one to sit still in classrooms well, but I was good at school. I liked learning.  I also really like sports. So, I thought, “Physical therapy is what you do if you're good at sports and good at school.” 

I started out majoring in athletic training with the intent to go to physical therapy school. But then, once I got into doing it a little bit and job-shadowed, I realized I wanted to be able to have more of a part in care. I switched to kinesiology to open it up a little bit. 

I ended up working as a nursing assistant and was able to get hands-on experience caring for people in a different way. I liked delving into medical issues, which ultimately led me to switching my major to pre-medicine and neuroscience. 

Along the way, I knew I wanted to study Spanish. So, I double-majored with Spanish for health and legal professions.

How did student orgs and extracurricular activities shape your time here? 

I've been a part of a lot. The first position I had was being co-president of Mixed Race in Medicine. That was the most foundational experience. I am mixed race myself, half Black, half white. It was a cool organization that I've only ever seen at this institution that was started by someone who is two years ahead of me. It was just a good opportunity to have a community of people who have experienced similar things while navigating life—feeling like you're not this race “enough” or not that race “enough.” And then we just did fun stuff together, living life, eating food. 

I was also involved with Student National Medical Association. I’m also Bean Learning Community mayor. I am currently the student body president. I also taught language hours with the Latino Medical Student Association. I've done a lot of recruitment events in between.  

I like being busy. You can spend a lot of time studying in medical school, but I think there's more enrichment from doing activities with your peers. Med school teaches you the hard science, and that is a necessary portion, but I think what I learned is the way you are with humans is going to take you so much further. Everyone's human at the end of the day; we're treating humans, we are human.  

What excites you about residency? 

It’s exciting and terrifying, like any next step. I remember being excited and terrified for medical school, where I'm finally doing the thing that I anticipated for so long. I put in orders now, and I take care of patients, but I always know it's going to go through a resident and then an attending. Well, now we're losing one of those steps. I'm the resident now, and if I put in an order, it's going to get signed. You're given a lot more freedom. That's an opportunity to make sure to refine my skills; that's the whole point of residency. Residency is the opportunity to become the physician I want to be. 

I want to teach in some way. I think teaching patients is important always—and even more important now with access to social media, and people are diagnosing themselves with TikTok. Eventually, I’d like to give back by teaching medical students and residents along the way. 

How are you feeling about Match Day? 

Match day is great, beautiful, and awful all at the same time. It's so bizarre to tell people, “I'm interviewing for a job, and I'll find out in four months where I'm going to go for that job.” We're used to instant gratification; the Match is the ultimate antithesis to that.  

I think it's going to be wonderful to see people matching at institutions all over the world. I'm excited to see where I end up. We all have ideas of where we're going to go. We put in our rank list, but ultimately, until you open that envelope that day, you're not going to know. Wherever I get placed, I'm going to make the best of it.