Victoria Ogunniyi, Writing Center Tutor Alumni Profile

• Pronouns: She/her/hers
• Graduated: Spring 2022 with major in Neuroscience, Minor in Professional Writing
• Took 222: with Kim O’Neil Fall 2019
• Tutored: 5 semesters, until graduation S22
• Currently: earning MD at Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, expected graduation Summer 2026

Where are you and what are you doing these days?

I’m a second year medical student [at University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine]. So that’s pre clinical. And so basically what that means is that I’m not responsible for seeing patients yet, but we’re sort of preparing for that transition. So right now we’re learning a lot of the basics, like I just finished Neurobiology and Human Behavior in Pharmacology. And we’re going to move on to this larger class called Clinical Practice, and then Therapeutics, and that’s going to lead us to our step exam, which the big thing that I’m leading up to. That’s the first part of three parts of our licensing exam.

Would it be accurate to say that a lot of the coursework of these first few years is preparatory for that exam?

Yes. Just for building the foundations more broadly. And then the second year is more clinical-focused and first year is just basic science and the generalist things.

How would you characterize the kind of culture of the med school at Pritzker and how big a cohort are you?

Very small cohort—I think compared to other schools, we’re only 89 pupils in our class, and I think that’s generally how many people it is; for most classes it’s like 88 to 90. And I would say it is a pretty diverse cohort, even though it is small, like we have a range of races, of geographical backgrounds that everyone’s from. A big range of schools as well. And I would say that the culture pretty generally is progressive—like, especially with our location, Hyde Park and the mission of the school, a lot of people are interested in social justice and how we can use our position in medicine for health advocacy, and a lot of those broader, societal aspects, which is nice. And I feel like that’s also emphasized in the curriculum as well. Like when we started first year, last year, we had a class called HEAR, which is Health Equity and Advocacy, [and Antiracism], and we learned about different disparities across communities. And that’s generally the spirit that they try to keep up throughout the education

Does the program feel like what you expected or imagined med school would feel like?

It honestly surprised me in a lot of good ways, actually, where, going in, I thought that it would be much more tunnel vision on the clinical aspect and the basic science aspect. And that is a large part. But in terms of when they’re starting to prepare [us] with clinical skills, it is a lot of interpersonal skills, focusing on relationships and understanding how different communities or different people might have different ways that they interact with the healthcare system and digging into that history—much more than I thought that they would explicitly talk about.

So I do like it and I have had a lot of fun with the clinical practice. What they do is they have these actors who portray themselves as patients and so that gives us an opportunity to practice before we actually practice in the hospital. So that’s really cool. Yeah.

How does that work? Do you sort of get to take turns role playing with them?

No. Sometimes we do it with our peers, we sort of take turns— but for them, I think they said they go through a 40-hour training program of like, what the patient experience could be like or what they specifically want us to know from that interaction. And then maybe once a month or every few weeks, we’ll meet up with those actors and practice a specific thing. Like, for first year, it was more so interpersonal skills, like taking the history, making them comfortable, and this year, it’s more like solidifying your ability to do the physical exam.

I actually know a professor who retired and is doing this work, she might even be in your actor corps. I forgot what she called it— a sample patient or something like that.

Yeah, the standardized patient. It’s actually interesting because I think a lot of the actors are ex-teachers.

What is your advice to people pursuing a similar path? Things you wish you had known or things you felt like you did right and would encourage other people to also do (who are interested in med school).

That’s a good question. I would like to start with the fact that I think you know that my path was a little different, because I had applied for UIC’s GPPA program, or it might just be called Medical Scholars Program. So from the get-go, from freshman year, I did have the security of knowing that I was automatically accepted into UIC’s Medical School.

And so for other students who don’t have that security, I would recommend you start preparing yourself early. And whether that’s research or shadowing—whatever you can do to get yourself clinically oriented to just see what it really looks like.

And I think that connects to another piece of advice that I have, which is make sure that you fully expose yourself because medicine is only one avenue in the overall branch of healthcare. And so there might be other ways that suit you better. Like maybe the doctor role isn’t necessarily what you want. Maybe you want to interact with patients in a different way.

And then something else that I wish that I had done more was branch out beyond science. Like, that’s what really meant a lot to me. To be involved in the Writing Center and to have that Professional Writing minor—it gave me an opportunity to do something non-scientific, and I wish I had leaned into that more.

And it’s really interesting too, like when I looked at my classmates, a lot of people have hobbies or academic passions or personal interests that are non-medical. And I think, not only for the sake of being well-rounded for your resume or for the application, but just for the sake of having something to lean on once you get here. Because it is a lot of information and a lot of things that will consume you and it’s nice to have something outside of that to relax and whatnot.

What other advice would I give?  Have non-scientific things in your mind as well as work on your interpersonal skills, because that’s actually such a large part of medicine, whereby you know, all my classmates are all smart, we’re all intelligent, but it’s just such a different skill to walk up to someone—even when you know that they’re an actor or they’re just your classmate—it’s a different skill to go through that interaction of seeing someone who’s vulnerable and knowing the position you have and trying to foster that trust and move forward in that interaction in a way that’s empathetic and comforting.

And that’s another thing that I appreciated about the Writing Center is that it sort of got me acclimated to that process of talking with someone you don’t know and creating that relationship.

You’re anticipating another question here, which is great, and, you’ve probably seen this coming, but maybe I’ll give you a chance to expand: how does your experience as a tutor come into play in your current program? What do you feel is transferable?

Yeah, and it’s actually funny to me because I talked about the parallels between being a tutor and how I foresaw myself as a physician in my application. Just because, one, there is that emphasis on building rapport. I know that’s something that we talked about a lot where it’s like, people are coming in with all kinds of expectations. And it’s a big thing in that interaction, to set the tone that it’s a welcoming environment, and it’s comforting and to be able to just do that with someone that you don’t know.

I think the other thing too, is that with the Writing Center, there was also the focus on the fact that you don’t want to be prescriptive, and that it is a mutual relationship. And I think that’s a good mindset to have in medicine as well, where we’re really moving past the idea that the doctor completely controls and monopolizes the interaction. And it’s supposed to be a conversation and an understanding between you and the patient. And so it’s nice to be able to collaborate in those kind of interactions.

What else? I guess the other thing too, in a broader sense, is that medicine is pretty story-based. Like, the patient communicating with you is a story, their history before they come to you is a story, and how you write up that interaction afterward in the note and communicate that to other people is a story as well.

And so it’s good to know how those stories have been created. Like, one big thing is that physicians don’t want to misrepresent the patient’s story in the note, because that can end up being detrimental to them. Like I know, coming into the school, they had told us about one student’s research project, where they saw that within UCM, physicians were more likely to use negative characteristics or descriptors when describing Black patients compared to white patients.

And so it’s like, that’s an example of people not really understanding what story that they’re building up in people’s minds based on how they’re communicating themselves. And I just think that general skill of communication and careful communication really matters in the healthcare realm.

It’s really interesting to hear that. It sounds like the curriculum is more explicitly talking about the doctors’ power as storytellers and how things like implicit bias can factor into that. Is it coming up within the HEAR [Health Equity, Advocacy, and Antiracism] class? They’re kind of giving you this language for thinking about conversation and collaboration as well—it’s really Writing Center language, in a way, right?

It is, it is, I want to say somewhat in the HEAR class and then even mostly explicitly in our clinical skills class. That’s the class that we started in first year, and we continue up until now up, until third year. So it’s not something that’s necessarily brought up all the time, but especially when we’re talking about things like certain communities, certain populations. And then next week we’re going to have a session on writing up the note; I don’t know if it will come up then but it may. But it’s definitely said in passing and brought up a bit.

What so far is your favorite, most challenging thing, and most surprising thing about med school so far?

For my favorite, I would say I like the freedom— the increased freedom. Because I know with our undergraduate career, there is a bit of a structure to what we have to do. But for graduate school it’s very much more open. For medical school it’s kind of different from other graduate programs, where we don’t select our classes. There’s a curriculum already laid out for us. But in terms of what we decide to pursue outside of classes, it’s pretty free.

Like how that usually happens is, for first year, that’s when you are involved in extracurricular activities. And so that’s the way that you decide to do things outside of the curriculum—like, some people help with the free clinics. Some people will help with various volunteering organizations. So that’s nice.

My least favorite would be the heftiness of the work. It’s definitely more heavy than anything I’ve experienced in my undergraduate career. And so it does take adjustments to get to that point. But I will say, connected, the surprising thing is that you are able to learn all that.

And that’s kind of how they describe medical school in general. They’re like, You’re gonna feel like you’re drinking from a firehose. It’s intentional. And it’s unavoidable. But it is something that you figure out and consolidate later.

On that front—that is something I’ve heard before from another student who went to med school, that the sheer volume of knowledge you’re being asked to ingest seems beyond what’s possible. You mentioned before that outside interests and hobbies seem to be helpful. What is helping you survive this? What are your strategies for staying sane and maintaining some sort of well-being and health through the process of ingesting all this?

For me, I’m very big on, like, doing what works best for my schedule. And so I know, myself, I personally don’t go to lectures. I feel like our class is kind of divided on this, where half of people go to lectures, half don’t. I’m the side that doesn’t go. I watch the recordings.

And so what I do with that increased flexibility of not going to lectures is, lately, I’ve been trying to dive more in my creative side. I have not had time to write, unfortunately, though, I do wish that I would be able to. But otherwise, I picked up the guitar again, which has honestly been very like—I don’t know, it’s elevated my mood more than I thought it would. It’s nice to sort of do something that’s not studying and that’s not so, how would you say, like structured all the time. So yeah.

And then otherwise, I have a friend at UIC, who we still keep in touch, and we have a little book club. So right now I’m reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, trying to finish that soon.

And yeah, I feel like that’s mostly what I do. I just kind of lean on what I enjoyed in my undergraduate years, which is also music, reading, writing. And so that’s why I’m like, it’s definitely important to find that in undergrad.

Yeah, that’s a really good point. [Pre-med students] might be tempted to neglect everything and say, I’m just going to pack my resume with everything medical, medical, medical, non-stop. That’s really helpful to know [that prioritizing time to explore your other interests is key].

You are a creative writer; would you also like to talk a little bit about the role of creative writing in your life and what kinds of writing you enjoy doing?

Yes, so I feel like right now I’m in a stage where I’m a bit separated from it. Which has happened before. I would say last year, I think it was senior year, was when I got back into it more heavily when I took Intro to Fiction writing or something like that.

And so I will say even though I’m a bit distant from it now, as a child and just sort of like, through middle school and high school, I just really liked the idea of creating stories. I was also a big reader. I think it was also a way for me to be like, Okay, I’m separating myself from academics and structure and working a different side of my brain.

I personally really like horror, mystery, psychological thriller—and I feel like maybe that’s just because I’m interested in psychiatry and the mind and the brain and all that. So I just like things that sort of fit within that lane.

Like the last really good book that I read was Gone Girl, which was the first book that I read in a bit. That’s the kind of stuff that I would hopefully be writing when I get back to it.

That’s really cool to hear. Well, I’m right now teaching a class called Medicine and Creative Writing for Honors College where we’re both reading fiction, and creative nonfiction about different people’s experiences of healthcare and illness, but also creative writing by doctors. So we will be coming to you when you have your book out, and asking for you to be on our syllabus!

Hopefully!

You mentioned that the extracurricular side of med school is where you have a chance to choose what you want to participate in. What are some things you’ve tried and what have you liked being involved in?

So last year, I was involved in a Psychiatric Interest Group. We have just little interest groups for all the different specialties, for people who want to investigate more what that looks like.

And the other thing that I was in—I was an academic liaison for SNMA,  I think that’s Student National Medical Association. That’s more so like a background affinity group, which they also have for different groups. So that one’s like for people who identify as Black.

And then the other major thing that I was in was this thing called Southside Community Health Advocates. And so what had happened was the students from the year above us applied for an AOA medical grant. So AOA is just kind of like the major body for medical students. And so they created this program where you get funded to do your own health initiative. So I signed up for that. And that was the main thing that I ended up doing. So me and two fellow peers, we worked mostly with someone who’s currently incarcerated in Statesville Correctional Center. And so my peer, India, she was responsible for like co-teaching a Violence and Trauma Recovery program in the jail or in the prison. And then what me and my partner did was we helped with that. And then we also worked with the community partner that she was working with to do a health fair in the summer—like a one-day free clinic.

Sometimes people really struggle with the transition. You had a pretty smooth transition from undergrad to grad because you knew where you were headed and you weren’t on the job market or anything like that. But in general, I guess, are there things that you feel like you wish you could go back and tell your undergrad self about how to at least survive undergrad?

I will say, reflecting back, now that I’m in grad school, I would tell my undergrad self to relax more.

The kind of ties to my advice about finding hobbies. I think it’s very easy when you’re trying to pursue a really competitive field or competitive profession to get lost and just— everything has to be moving towards that goal.

But I think it’s honestly really important to just think about what’s best for you in the present. Because even though I directly transitioned to medical school, it’s actually much more common now to take a gap year in between. Many of my classmates have even taken two or three gap years. And I think that’s honestly a really smart move. One, if you’re just not sure if you want to directly go from school to school, it’s nice to take a break in between and experience life and maybe get a job in between, or you know, maybe completely change if you want to go to medical school and all.

So yeah, I don’t know if I would consider a gap year just because I kind of knew that this is probably what I want to go ahead and move forward with. But for people in general, it’s probably a good idea to give yourself that time to figure out what the next stage of life is gonna look like.

You’re the second med student I’ve interviewed who said they wish they could tell their undergrad self to relax a little bit! The sense that everything is so high stakes and you just have to be pushing yourself to your very limit at every moment—that can be tough to sustain.

What for you are next steps? Do you do feel like your medical program so far has given you further clarity about what kind of specialties you want to enter or what you want to do going forward?

I shadowed psychiatry the summer of my first year. And it honestly affirmed my feeling that that is a specialty that I want to pursue.

Coming in, I had sort of generally decided that I probably wanted to do psychiatry as well, just because I was like, I’m interested in the brain and mental health and that’s mostly in the domain of psychiatry versus other things.

But honestly, looking at psychiatry, and then after taking this like psychiatry-focused class a few weeks ago, it made me realize that psychiatry is the one that’s least medicine-like, in a way? Where it’s like, you’re not really doing physical exams, you’re not really doing that many labs and procedures. It’s very much getting to know someone. Like, for the resident that I shadowed, she spent like an hour talking to this person about their life, their background, how they’re feeling.

And it is much more of what I want from medicine, which is that listening to the patient’s story, and then thinking about solutions that most fit with their life. It’s very much more life-focused.

If you pursue psychiatry, that means you’d be applying for residency in psychiatry post grad?

Yeah.

Do you see yourself wanting to stay in the Chicago area or do you feel like you want to see different areas?

I feel like so many people have asked me this, because even before medical school, I applied out of course, but I only applied to Chicago schools. And I told the GPPA director this and he was just like, Oh my gosh, don’t you want to see somewhere else? And I’m like, In a way.

So I think for residency I will consider going elsewhere. It’s just the problem of, I guess, what schools are best for psychiatry and just like what fits my goals most.

I will say for psychiatry, I think it ends up being the coast that are the top residency programs. So like, New York and Boston for the East Coast, and then California, mostly, for the West Coast. And so I may end up going somewhere else. It’s just I’ve been here for so long that I’m like, okay, that feels comfortable.

How well do you feel like the program has allowed you to meet like-minded people? Do you feel like you’ve been able to connect with a friend community? Is it a supportive environment socially? Does it feel there’s a sense of belonging or connection?

I feel like, yeah, there’s a lot of opportunities to find people who are like-minded. Because I think they did a good job of getting a diverse cast of people—like, I’ve seen a lot of people who are my ethnicity, for example, there are a lot of Nigerian people or a lot of African people and then generally, there’s a decent amount of Black students.

And then in terms of activities, there are the volunteering in other service-based organizations, but there are also organizations based on hobbies. So there is a music club. There is a singing club, a sewing club, and knitting club that I tried. but I’m unfortunately not a knitter. And running and all those other things. So there’s also the hobby activities, which is nice. So you have opportunities built-in also to find people who do similar hobbies or explore a new hobby.

What about the instructors? Do you feel like the instructors get to know the students or are the class sizes so big that it’s less individualized or personalized?

I will say, generally for most classes, we have lecture and then the discussion component. I will say that you mostly get to know the TAs versus the instructor.

But they generally know all of us—even at the level of admin, just because we’re so small, they mostly know who we all are.

And in terms of getting an intimate connection with the instructors, I feel like, for the most part, not really? But if you reach out to them, they usually have office hours or opportunities to talk to them, for example, for review or whatnot. They try to reach out to us in a lot of different ways. They do.

How did you learn the guitar? Let’s hear a little more about that.

Okay, my guitar journey is pretty funny. Because what made me want a guitar in the first place was around middle school—Okay, like, so my parents are Nigerian immigrants. But their music tastes are so different. Like my mom, mostly, she’ll stick to Nigerian music and gospel music. But my dad has always been the one to just expose me to random music. Somehow he has a large repertoire of 90s music, because I think around then, that’s when he was sort of thinking about America and like being tuned into the pop culture.

And so just a lot of songs he would show me and then what I would explore and find on my own had guitar, and I just thought, like, Oh, that’d be cool to try to play that. Like I enjoy the sound.

And so I think for some reason, I wrote an essay about why I should have a guitar and how it would make me a better student. And my dad read it and then he bought me like this cheap acoustic guitar from Ebay. I still remember it. I was just kind of like, What is this? I don’t really like it. (laughs)

I didn’t play it that much. But then freshman year of undergrad, my roommate, Michelle, she had an electric guitar and she’d play it every now and then and that sort of reignited my fire for it. And so that year, for my birthday, my mom took me to Guitar Center and got me my electric guitar.

And so it’s just kind of been like this on-and-off thing of me like not playing it because I’m busy, but then thinking, Okay, I want to play electric guitar and one day I would like to get proficient at it, make music maybe.And so I’m on my up again, of playing, practicing.

Did you take lessons or are you self-taught?

I took, like, maybe two or three-day lessons from Guitar Center that came with a guitar, but otherwise, I’m mostly self-taught. There’s this website that I’m following, which is nice because I think it’s hard for me to stick to a hobby if I don’t have a structure. So I’m kind of forcing myself to have a structure through it.

What’s the website, for people who want to know?

Oh, let me see. It’s Justinguitar.com. I highly recommend it. It’s probably the best thing I’ve ever seen and it’s free.

That’s awesome. There are these philanthropists out there who just give away their knowledge and instruction on YouTube and whatever and they’re kind of amazing resources.

They absolutely are.

What about songwriting? Do you like to write songs or do you like to cover songs that you already know and enjoy?

I’m unfortunately not that good at playing to guitar yet to cover most songs; that would be my goal, too. But there’s this thing called Ableton, which is digital music production, and so it’s pretty easy to just play around with the noises. So I’ve made a few small projects on there.

What sort of got me into that was my boyfriend, he also kind of somewhat dabbles in music. He doesn’t play any instruments, but he uses that digital music program. And lately I feel like I’ve been really music-focused because his roommates are in a band. And like, they’re always practicing. And I’ve been to a lot of their concerts and so I’m just like, okay, I’d like to do that, somewhat. If I could.

Yeah, sometimes just by proximity, we get a little bit more fired up or immersed in it. May I ask you—you don’t have to answer this— is your partner someone who is in school with you as well?

So I met him still during undergrad and now he’s an accountant. He’s working. He’s studying right now for the CPA. So he took the first part, and now he’s about to take the second part, so we’re soon gonna be in the same boat of studying for our licensing exams.

And does that help having someone who’s not of that world that can be your person to vent to or have a change of gears with?

Absolutely. Like, I love going to his apartment because I’m just like, Okay, thank God. These are people who know nothing about medicine. And will never speak of it!

And it’s funny because like, because he’s studying for the CPA, sometimes he’ll tell me about what he’s learning and I’m just kind of like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. So it’s refreshing.

You don’t have pets in the picture, right?

I don’t have pets. Unfortunately.

It’s an aspirational thing, perhaps! What would the pet be? I remember this was one of my cheesy icebreakers. I would ask people to tell us about your pet you have or the pet you wish you had, to try and include the people who don’t have pets. What would be the pet you wish you had?

So for the longest time, I’ve been a theoretical cat lover, and I think I still do love them, in a way? But my boyfriend was cat-sitting for his grandma once and I helped him do that. And I’m just like, cats are actually a bit annoying. I’m definitely more of a dog person.

I forget what her breed, she was something about like a teddy bear cat? I’ll have to look up the real name. She was definitely high strung and scratched me a bit. That’s the logistical issue with cats.

Is there anything else that you feel would be helpful for tutors who are considering med school to know, especially for those who are first in their family to pursue a career in healthcare? You have like nurses in your family, I think you told me.

I feel like it’s kind of a pain because the de facto profession is nursing because we’re immigrants, but I am the first to pursue medicine.

I will say it’s kind of different for me because my parents have been to higher education and like I have a lot of family in health care.

But for people who don’t have that support, schools have some support—but I will say like, a lot of that support will probably be from your peers. Medicine can sometimes be a bit classist, a bit elitist, unfortunately, and so you do have to lean on your peers as well and lean on your patients too. Because at the end of the day, that population is not who represents who you’re actually going to be treating and who actually needs you in the field.

Well, thank you again, Victoria. You’re incredibly generous with your time and I’m so happy to see you looking and sounding well and happy. I’m glad that the program sounds like it’s been a good fit for you. I know you had a lot of options. It feels like you’re happy you went where you went.

I really enjoy it. And the best thing for me was that, I’m like okay, I actually do really like medicine because that was the worry because I had jumped into it from freshman year. I love it a lot. It’s way more humanistic than I thought it would be and so I’m really excited.