What is your job/position?
Pulmonary critical care fellow, NYU. Air Force doctor and currently getting more training in ICU medicine.
Describe the path that took you from your American Studies degree to your current career or life situation.
Always wanted to go into medicine but loved the humanities. American Studies allowed me the credit hour leeway to pursue my premed coursework and my humanities work at the same time. Though I was tempted to pursue a humanities PhD, seeing the job market struggles.
What are the specific competencies you cultivated as an American Studies student that you now use in your professional life and that set you apart from your colleagues?
The most important skill I learned was how to critically think and synthesize all of my various training into unique approaches to the multitude of issues I face in medicine. I have been lucky to be granted a unique paradigm born of my cross training and I have had great success applying it across disciplines. In particular, American studies highly values interdisciplinary thinking and that has served me extremely well in my career to this point.
What are some of the surprising ways in which your American Studies degree has helped you in your professional or personal life?
I have been drawn to diversity, equity, and inclusion work in medicine, and my humanities background has left me with an extremely strong foundation to effectively advocate in medicine. It is amazing how much of the groundbreaking work on DEI and narrative medicine is taken for granted in the humanities space.
What do you wish you had known as an American Studies student? What advice would you share with current students?
I wish I had been more prepared for how much of my training I would carry into medicine. I also wish I had been more prepared to teach these things to colleagues.
*You can contact Craig with questions about his American Studies story at craig.yugawa@gmail.com.