Internship Alum Interview: Aamy Woldesenbet
This post is part of a series of interviews with past interns about how Concussion Alliance impacted their lives going forward. This interview follows up with Aamy Woldesenbet, who graduated from the University of Washington in Seattle in 2022. He is currently on his way to medical school. To learn more, see Aamy Woldesenbet’s profile page. This interview was conducted by Ella Gullickson, a sophomore history major at Carleton College, as part of her December 2023 internship. See Ella’s profile.
Interview Summary
His Project
I started working with the Concussion Alliance back in the summer of 2021, back in June. I was a junior in college, and I was looking for internship opportunities in the area of research, particularly ones where I could kind of form connections with professionals in neuroscience.
The project I worked on was the History of Concussion as a Public Health Issue. Going into the internship, I had a very minimal understanding of concussions. Before, I understood concussion research as more associated with the end of the 20th century and the NFL. And I found out that even in the early 20th century, with the rise of boxing, a lot was going into that research, and it was really interesting to see it from a public health perspective. Having looked at the history and seeing various techniques used by researchers and public health professionals, really helped me learn and apply how to look at things from that lens in areas outside of concussions. I was very lucky to even have the opportunity to work on the History of Concussion webpage, given how much overlap there is between what I studied in undergrad and what I studied in neuroscience and public health and what I had to do for the project. For me, particularly because I studied public health in undergrad as well, it helped me look at things from a different lens, like, how can we help solve this issue at a population level and have or at least treat it at a population level. Overall, I had a very positive experience.
Career Development
The Concussion Alliance Internship has helped me continue to develop my research background, particularly in terms of my comprehension of dense research papers, as well as building connections with professionals and just being comfortable talking with professionals in areas of research that I'm interested in, which I was not so comfortable doing before my internship. I got quite a lot out of it and am very thankful to Conor and Malayka, who continued to support me ever since then.
We had to write a newsletter during the internship, and I came back as a volunteer newsletter writer after the internship for two reasons. One was to continue to develop my reading comprehension skills. Research papers are dense with lots of scientific jargon, and having the ability to peruse through them and take notes and understand what's going on and condense that into a paragraph or two in the form of a synopsis for people to read, especially those who are not in research areas or just well acquainted with scientific terms and just science in general. Yeah, it's a really good skill, and it helped me beyond just the internship or volunteering. For example, I had to take the MCAT about six months ago because I'm pre-med, and the format of the MCAT is mostly research papers. There are abstracts pulled from research papers, which you use to answer questions on MCAT. Having the comprehension skills that I built from volunteering and in the internship, I found it helpful when taking the MCAT and during the entire preparation process.
Additionally, showing that I continued working with Concussion Alliance was something positive for my medical application. They like continuity, and this is one of the few experiences I had during the last couple of years where I had a degree of continuity. In hindsight, it was a great decision to continue to be a part of the Concussion Alliance.
Furthermore, I was able to get some help from Conor and Malayka. They helped me network with a couple of other previous interns who had taken the MCAT, and they sent me some resources. I used those resources in preparation for the MCAT, so they're really helpful.
Highlights of Internship
Some highlights were we had various panels throughout the internship. These individuals had the opportunity to share their research with us, and they were on topics that I was interested in, so I took a lot of notes during those times. Every now and then, I'll go back and read some if I find it relevant to whatever I'm doing. It was really, really positive. And I also really enjoyed how Conor and Malayka encouraged a very friendly, collaborative environment among us interns. So beyond just working on projects, even though we were on Zoom, we had a lot of time to just interact and do different activities, so we got to know each other outside of working on projects together.
One particularly impactful expert speaker was Dr. Sandel. I had the opportunity to work with her, because she also guided me in my project. She wrote a book that we all read called Shaken Brain during the internship. I credit her with having the most impact on my internship experience. Additionally, there was one professor from UW, Dr. Christine Mac Donald, whom I reached out to about a year and a half ago to seek some research opportunities, and she helped connect me with some opportunities after I graduated, which was positive too. Although, most of my networking was done through Conor and Malayka. They helped link me with different resources within my local area in Seattle, and ways to approach communication with professionals.
Experience with Concussion
I have only had a concussion once in my life, and that was in elementary school, running backward. I was playing "Fives," and I was running backward really fast, and my friend was sprinting the other way, and he wasn't looking. I wasn't looking. And I smashed the back of my head with his head. It was terrible. I still remember that pain to this day; my whole, everything just blacked out, and things just got really sparkly in my eyes. And I thought for a couple of seconds that I was going to be blind or something. It was really scary for me, because I've never had any injuries, never had broken my leg or any other bones, never had surgery up to that point in my life. So, that was the very first major clinical issue that I faced.
I went through the basic concussion protocol at my school. The PE teacher asked me a bunch of questions like, "Who's the current president? How old are you?" And I was able to answer them, but it took me some time, at least the very first couple of questions, and I was like, wow. That was the very first time where I realized how kind of fragile we are as humans, and I bring that up because yeah, I think in my experience, I was very fortunate that that's where everything ended. So I was able to recover within a day or two. At least, I didn't have any headaches or anything after a little bit as far as I remember. And that was it. I never really thought about it, didn't have to do any follow-up visits with doctors or anything like that.
Since the internship, I have thought about concussions seriously as a major, population-level clinical issue. We were also exposed to a bunch of literature and experiences, anecdotes from people who gave panels, and fellow interns. I realized concussion has had a huge impact on people's lives. And I started sympathizing with people who had concussions and realizing how, I don't want to say ignorant, I was, but just uneducated. I took concussion very seriously following the internship. And I credit that to the internship because I could see firsthand the impact it had on people's lives. And now, when I play soccer with people. I always tell my teammates to be conscious of the heads around them when it comes to headers and large amounts of contact.
