Interview with Trae Dunn

About Trae

Trae Dunn is a third-year MD/PhD student at Stanford University. He completed his undergraduate studies at Kennesaw State University, where he majored in biology.

In high school, Trae was a devoted athlete, focusing primarily on baseball until a serious injury changed everything. That experience introduced him to medicine on a deeply personal level and sparked a new goal: to become an orthopedic surgeon, a vision he pursued through his senior year project.

When college admissions didn’t go as planned and he was rejected from his top-choice schools, Trae assumed Kennesaw State would be a temporary stop on his path. Instead, it became the perfect fit. He quickly immersed himself in research as a freshman and attended several summer programs that introduced him to a supportive, inspiring community of mentors and future colleagues in the MD/PhD world.

Trae’s career aspirations have evolved since then. After his grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, he shifted his focus to the brain. Today, his research aims to develop a more selective, next-generation Parkinson’s drug, one that minimizes harmful side effects. He is also exploring novel compounds that target underexplored proteins, with the hope of discovering entirely new therapeutic pathways.

For aspiring MD/PhD students, Trae emphasizes the importance of mentorship, especially finding people who’ve walked the path you're hoping to follow. Connecting with other Black male MD/PhD students showed Trae that there were others who looked like him and that they could guide, support, and inspire him to keep going.

My favorite quote from the interview:

Having someone that I can resonate with was crucial in terms of having confidence I can go down this path. 

Watch the video or continue reading to learn more about Trae's story.

Transcript

Chelsy Do: Thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me. It's so nice to finally meet you. Whenever you're ready, we can begin the interview.

Trae Dunn: Nice to meet you as well. Yeah, I'm ready whenever you are.

Trae's Educational Background

Chelsy Do: So, I wanted to begin talking about you and your educational background. Can you begin talking about your journey starting from high school into undergraduate?

Trae Dunn: Yeah. Into undergraduate you said?

Chelsy Do: Yeah.

Trae Dunn: So I grew up in Georgia. I went to South Forsyth High School, and in high school I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do until probably the end of my high school career. 

Growing up I was an avid athlete. I played a lot of baseball growing up, and as a result of the injuries that I had while playing baseball, that kind of exposed me to medicine and that side of education. So actually, growing up, I didn't take my elementary, middle school or high school education super seriously until I had this focus on becoming a doctor. And that all led to my senior project of my senior year which was basically doing an outline of how do you want to get to your career? And for me, that was becoming at the time an orthopedic surgeon. 

And so, following that, I actually did just an extensive amount of research using all online resources such as YouTube, friends, family to just kind of get an idea of what was required to go into medicine. And so after high school, I ended up going to Kennesol State University in Kennesaw, Georgia and I hit the ground running. And so I knew which classes I needed to take. I ended up being a biology major, but I also knew I was interested in research. And so I started actually looking for research opportunities as soon as I got to campus. And I think that was just because I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do at the time. And I don't think that is necessarily normal. I don't think most students that go into college know exactly what they want to do. 

But I think I was fortunate enough to kind of have an idea of what I want to do. And that allowed me to get the most out of my undergraduate experience. And I can talk more about my undergraduate experience, but that was kind of like what the transition between high school and college was like for me.

Chelsy Do: Gotcha. If you have any more to share about your undergraduate experience, that would be awesome.

Trae Dunn: So at Kennesaw, I guess I'll backtrack with that. It wasn't the school I wanted to go to out of high school. I wanted to go to UGA, which is what most of my classmates from my high school went to, but unfortunately I didn't get accepted to UGA. So actually my original plan was to go to Kennesaw and then actually transfer to Emory after a year because I thought, at the time, that Emory would be a better school for me. 

But the reality of it was actually that Kennesaw State was the perfect place for me. And as I stated a second ago, I think Kennesaw was a place that allowed students like myself, freshman in college, to get experience doing research from day one and I don't think that's the case at most schools. And I think another unique thing about Kennesaw was that most of the labs there don't have PhD students. And so most times the undergraduates are the ones that are really driving projects and so that gives you a lot of real hands-on experience doing research in college. 

And so for me, I ended up joining Dr. from Martin Hudson's lab at Kennesaw State University during the third month after I got to his campus. And I remember talking to Dr. Hudson–his lab is very focused on genetics specifically on nervous system development–and I had not taken a single biology course yet, not a single college biology course yet. And I remember sitting in his office telling him that I was interested in joining his lab and he said, "Okay, do you want to start tomorrow?"

And I was very surprised by that response because I would expect that I need to take all these courses and so forth. But the reality of the situation is will those courses have helped me? Yes. But at any point when I've joined the lab I would have had to learn a lot regardless of the fact. And so I think having the opportunity to be in the lab as a freshman, yes it was a little bit tough in the beginning but I was going to have a tough beginning no matter when I started. 

And that allowed me to have four dedicated years of time to just really explore what research was like. And so I did four years of research in that lab. For the first two years, I worked with some of the grad students. In this case, masters students are the highest level grad students at Kennesaw State. And then once they graduated I basically became a senior member of the lab and so I was running my own projects. I was training new students.

And throughout all this, I led one project that led to a publication and was very fortunate to actually be able to present my work at a multitude of conferences, which I think is another great experience to have. And so that was the research side of it. But from an education standpoint, I had all these classes outlined and I was very fortunate enough to be a part of an honors program at Kennesaw State University. So, I had basically a cohort of students that were like-minded like myself. And so, we would all take the same science courses. I think that made the transition to college a lot easier because I had a lot of good friends that I was going to be taking each course with. And they became my study buddies, my motivational speakers when things were getting tough.

That was a very fortunate thing I had at Kennesaw, just having the same faces in a lot of my classes together and so I was able to excel well in the classes. And I think that was also partly because when I first got to college as well, before I actually even joined a research lab, I took some time to focus first on just learning on how to study in college. I think it's a little bit different than high school. 

But once I had my framework that worked for me I then started adding extracurriculars that I was passionate in. And so obviously I just mentioned research. Some of the other extracurriculars that I did were, I was a teacher assistant; I love teaching. So I taught general chemistry a lot for freshmen and sophomores throughout my time at Kennesaw State. I was in a fraternity. I did some other mentoring, many other stuff that I’ve actually probably forgotten at this point, but essentially I did things that I was only passionate about which made them enjoyable to do while also studying pretty hard for my classes and trying to do well in school. 

The last thing I'll say about just my undergraduate experience is that I took advantage of my summers. I was very fortunate enough to do a summer research program at MIT and I was able to work with a Nobel laureate in their lab and really just get to learn from them and the rest of the lab members and it was just a really phenomenal experience. Part of this summer research program, you do it with another cohort of students from all across the world and a lot of those students became some of my best friends and some of them I still keep in touch with today. And all of us are in various different programs whether MD only programs or just grad school specifically at a lot of the top institutions or other institutions in itself. And I think taking advantage of those summers that I had was very crucial in my development as a trainee and as a future physician scientist, and without that I don't think I would be in the position I am today. 

Ending my college career, I was part of the people that went through Covid 19. And so towards the end of my junior and then all my senior year, I had to deal with Covid 19. So that actually put some restraints in terms of my ability to do research, at school summer programs, etc. So, at this point in time, I just focused on my application, the MCAT, and other stuff that I needed in order to then apply for MD/PhD programs later on.

Chelsy Do: Gotcha. You mentioned Dr. Hudson as being your PI for all of your undergraduate. Is that correct?

Trae Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, when I was at Kennesaw, he was my main PI and then I had one other PI which was at MIT and that was a Nobel Laureate.

Influential Figures and Mentors

Chelsy Do: Gotcha. would you say so I'm sure Dr. Hudson was an influential figure in your time. Was there anybody else…, whether in high school or in your undergraduate, that helped you build your thinking towards your future or your career, and where you wanted to be in the future? [Someone who] kind of helped you on that path?

Trae Dunn: Yeah, I think Dr. Hudson was one of the crucial people. First and foremost, he's the one that gave me the initial opportunity to do research. That was the spark that I found that I liked research. And so without him, giving me a chance, like I said before, I probably wouldn't be here today.

I mentioned the Nobel laureate I work with as well. He gave me a lot of good life lessons and insight in terms of how to be a good scientist, how to think about science correctly. And so from a professional standpoint, those two were phenomenal from a research standpoint. 

I also had a lot of other great faculty members at Kennesaw State University that became basically second mothers to me. So that includes Dr. Melanie Griffin, Dr. Jennifer Louten, Dr. Kimberly Cortez (her name changed now because she married), and many more that I didn't mention. But all these people were not only teachers of some of the classes I took but also just mentors that I can go to their office if I was stressed out, talk about life, and to this day I keep in touch with a lot of them. So without them, as well, I probably wouldn't be here today 

And then I think the last set of people, besides my family and friends, that played critical [roles] in my journey were actually students that were in positions that I hope to be in later on. And so I was fortunate, like I said, to do a summer program at MIT. And while at MIT, if you said you're interested in MD/PhD path, they would actually pair you with a current Harvard MIT MD/PhD student as your mentor. And so mine, his name was Kojo. He was a phenomenal mentor for me because he was also a Black male, and so he was able to understand kind of what things that I might be going through or also recognizing that there's not many people that look like us in this space. Having someone that I can resonate with was crucial in terms of having confidence I can go down this path. 

Not only did I have Kojo at Harvard MIT but I also had one at Stanford. And that was because I did this program called the Stanford MSTP boost program, which is basically an early identification support program for people interested in the MD/PhD path. And my mentor that I was assigned through, his name was Quinton, and same thing there. 

Quinton is basically a brother to me. He's taken care of me in many ways that I can't count. I recall when I was studying for the MCAT during the pandemic and during the George Floyd strikes. I remember it was a really tough time and I would call him when a practice exam wouldn't go well. He would calm my nerves, get me realigned, and instill confidence in me. So when I ended up coming to Stanford and regrouping with him in person, it kind of was a surreal moment that a lot of the mentors that put a lot of effort in me were able to get me to this point. 

And that's why since I've gotten to this point. A big thing that I'm passionate about is giving back to students that are interested in this path that might not have all the answers or not sure of what to do. And that's because I was once in that same position. And I wouldn't be here, once again, today without my research faculty, the general faculty, but also just the student faculty or student mentors that I had that have led me to this point.

Chelsy Do: That's incredibly inspirational and super amazing that you found that community and that you still have that to this day. So, did you take any gap years before going into your MD/PhD, and if you did what did you do during that time?

Trae Dunn: I did one gap year. I think applying to med school is quite hard coming out of college nowadays just because it's gotten pretty competitive. And so if you want to go straight from college to med school, you need to be applying by the end of your junior year. And that means you need to have taken the MCAT, have all the pre-requisites taken, solid letters of recommendation, etc, shadowing, all that stuff.

And I think that was a little too much to put on my plate. And so I came in knowing that I was going to apply during my senior year, which meant that the whole year after I graduated, I'll be in the application cycle. So I needed to do something. 

I ended up doing a program funded by the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This was a research kind of post-bac program. And the reason why I chose to do it at UAB was for a couple reasons. One, I had was that I was most likely going to be leaving Georgia for an extended period of time for my MD/PhD training, probably across the country, which ended up being true. So, I wanted to stay close to the family and spend that time with them while I could along with my friends. 

And then second of all, the other thing was at UAB, there was this lab and the PI's name was Dr. Erik Roberson. He [is] a physician scientist. He is a neurologist and his lab focuses on drug development for Alzheimer's disease, which was the exact thing I wanted to study in the exact career path I wanted to go down. I saw it as the best of both worlds, where I can stay close to home so I can spend time with my family and friends, but also I can really do research that is aligned with what I was motivated at the time and I still am at this time, to see truly if I really wanted to do this as well. And sure enough, as I was there, I found out that I loved it and that I knew I was making the right decision as I was going down the application cycle. So yeah, I did that for a year. I actually commuted to and from Alabama a lot to home to see my family and my friends. My mom was not so happy about the amount of mileage I was driving, but I wouldn't take that back because now I live on the whole other side of the country and I don't really get to see them as much. And then like I said, the experience I had there was super eye opening. It was a different kind of research than what I did at Kennesaw State. 

There's different levels of research. So some research in the lab can be considered basic science. What that means is you're trying to answer more fundamental questions, like how does life work. And then there's labs that are more translational. The whole goal is to take these basic discoveries and maybe make therapeutics, for instance. Then there's clinical research, which is at the higher end. [It’s] like taking these drugs, these modifications, and seeing how they affect clinical practice. My undergraduate work was a lot of basic science work and I wanted to do more translational work and so being able to do drug development and Alzheimer's disease. That was very translational and that was something that was unique than what I did in college. Yeah, so that's what I did during my gap year. It was a really great time.

Chelsy Do: Gotcha. What was your transition like, going from your gap year into the MD/PhD program that you're at now?

Trae Dunn: Yeah, I think one of the biggest transitions when you switch from, I guess, college to med school or MD/PhD in general, is that college you have letter grades for the most part. And I think those grades really matter. I mean, they do matter, but when you get to med school, the amount of material is much higher, but the goal is just to pass a class. So I think that was the initial thing. When I got to Stanford, for the start of my MD/PhD training, I was learning how to not care so much–I mean that in a good way, obviously.

You want to know as much as you can, but I think there's a fine line between knowing as much as you can and protecting your mental health. I think that the biggest thing about transitioning to medical school is realizing that it's not possible to remember everything and get a perfect score on every exam. Sometimes, a B or a C on the exam is more than good enough for the circumstances that you are under to learn all this material. And so that was one key adjustment from a school standpoint.

The other standpoint for me, as I mentioned earlier, is I was moving across the country and so I had nobody, not a single family member, that lived in northern California. And so basically I was starting from scratch. But I think Stanford and my classmates and just this community is a very friendly community. It was within minutes that I made a lot of friends and found my support systems and feel very comfortable here. And so I think that was some of the transition parts but I also found looking back it was some of the best times of my life. I think transition to med school is scary I think and it started a new chapter, but it was some of the greatest first few days of that chapter. I think most students that embark on the same journey have a very similar experience as well.

Trae's MD/PhD Journey

Chelsy Do: Gotcha. So now we can talk more about why you chose to pursue an MD/PhD. Why wasn't one enough for you, one or the other?

Trae Dunn: Yeah, that’s actually a classic interview question. So I'm not interview trained anymore, but for me growing up as I started off with, I was really interested in orthopedic surgery. That later transitioned to nerve surgery and then later transitioned again to neurology. I was very fascinated with the brain and how the brain gives us consciousness, how we can remember, etc. And so that was part of the reason why I wanted to join the Hudson lab because it studied how the brain developed. 

But when learning more about medicine and our capabilities in neurology, I learned how limited we are. We don't know that much actually about how our brain works, especially when it's under duress and causes diseases. We really don't know how these diseases arise and how we can treat them effectively without damaging the normal tissue of the brain because it's so vital. 

And I found that as a really hard thing to possibly go down and become a neurologist and know that, maybe I'm going to have to deal with patients that come in with a certain disease, and I'm not going to be able to give them anything that can give them any meaning back to real life. And I know that's going to be hard on the patient but also the family and the support system. And I remember thinking about that just personally about other families. I didn't ever imagine that it would affect my own family until it did. 

Someone I was very close with is my grandfather on my dad's side. He actually ended up getting diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. And at this point, I knew so much about Alzheimer's disease. And so when I heard he was diagnosed with it, I knew that this was not good. Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative disease that leads to progressive loss of memories. It's also known as the “long goodbye" because it takes quite some time before the individual passes away from it or from another thing [related to] it. 

I was very close with my grandfather–we always talked about various physics related things or just school sports related things. And then those conversations ended up turning to how old he was, what his wife's name was, etc., those recurrent questions about just basic things that he should know. At the same time, knowing in the back of my mind that the current medications that he was taking had no effect on the underlying disease. And so I really sat back then I was like, is this really what I want to do?

Do I really want to go down a path, become a physician, help some patients, but then ultimately not be able to help patients like my grandfather? And the answer was quickly no. I don't think I was going to be happy doing that for 20, 30 years. And at the same time, I was doing research and I was like, wow, this is kind of cool. I'm learning how to study the nervous system and how it works. And I'm building new knowledge that can potentially later lead to drugs.

What if I can combine both? Because I do like medicine in the fact that there are some things you can help, and I do think being a physician during people's lowest points is powerful, but I also want to still help push the field to the next horizon. And so at this point in time, I just did a simple Google search and saw that there was a joint program, the MD/PhD, and I was like, that seems like my goal.

The reason why I still want to do both the MD and the PhD is because… You actually can do research as an MD only, and as a PhD only you can't see patients, but you can obviously do research. But I thought the MD/PhD would be crucial for my hopeful future of being able to do both. The MD would obviously give me the training to learn how to take care of patients and also identify what we currently know in the medical space. But the PhD would also give me the technical skills on how to ask the right questions, how to design experiments that can lead to new answers that can then hopefully be developed into a therapy. And so I thought that the PhD training would be crucial in order to optimally train me to be the best physician but also the best scientist at the same time.

And so I felt that I needed both, and that without the other I'd be probably less effective in the future. I guess only time will tell if I am effective, but so far I have not had any regrets doing this journey.

Chelsy Do: Thank you for sharing your story about your grandfather. I can also kind of relate to that. My own grandfather passed away this year from Parkinson's disease, and also another kind of a father figure was diagnosed with Parkinson. So I can totally relate to kind of seeing that and having the same questions. I think that's another driving force for me as well. So, it was really cool to hear your story. 

You're talking about how you felt like you needed both in order to have an effective career to do what you want to do. And so MD/PhDs are known to offer career flexibility. What do you think you want your future work life to look like? Kind of that split.

Trae Dunn: Yeah, that's a great question. I'm still trying to figure that out. And I think that's just a general note for any student that's coming after me.

Your career goals change all the time. Even if you think you have it completely figured out, sometimes things change. And so I know some core principles that I know I want to have in my future career. I'm a very family oriented person. I really want to have a good work life balance, be there for my wife, my future kids. I want to be able to be in their life and not just work all the time. I also want to spend time with my parents while they're still here, my sister, etc., and their families as well. And then obviously my friends. So I want to make sure that's a priority and that I go down a path that allows me to have that flexibility.

But then obviously I want to have a career where I can have impact in, both as a clinician but also as a scientist. What that looks like is–that can be a lot of different things. I think being at Stanford really helps that gives me opportunities in all these different spaces. The classical path that most MD/PhDs go down, or that's kind of what you're supposed to say you're supposed to go down, is to become a PI [and] work at an academic institution. I think that if that opportunity does present itself, it would be a great opportunity. I love mentoring students, so I like having my own lab with various students in it and training them would be very fun. But also, it's really hard to get an academic job. They're very scarce and they're very limited. 

I also could work for instance at a pharmaceutical company or biotech. I like these companies for the reason that the whole goal of these companies is to produce a product that actually works. Because obviously these are businesses at the end of the day, so they need to make money. But in order to make money, they need to actually discover something that works and actually can actually cause real change. While in academics, that's not necessarily the focus at times. Sometimes the science is just to understand science for the science. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. That's really crucial. 

So there's pros and cons at either level. Especially like I said with pharma, sometimes you have to just go with the goal of what the company is going after. So I guess time will tell what opportunities present themselves. I could see myself leading a group at a biotech pharma company. I think that's currently where I'm most interested in, just because of the product driven nature. but I'm definitely open-minded and yeah, we'll see in five, 10 years time what job offers I'm getting. So, we'll see.

Chelsy Do: Okay. Could you share what year you're in your MD/PHD right now?

Trae Dunn: So, I'm a third year, hopefully out of seven years. MD/PhD programs are quite long, and the way that they're generally split up for the most part is you do your first one to two years of med school, your pre-clan years, so that's like your typical book study years. I did the first two years of med school and then took my first medical licensing exam known as Step One. And then after that, I actually ended up doing one clerkship, just to get an idea of what real medicine looks like, actually taking care of patients. 

And then I started my PhD. I'm now at the end of my first year of my PhD. I'm in the chemical and systems biology program. And the lab that I ended up joining, his name is Dr. Nathaniel Gray. Our lab is virtually a pharma company. We do a lot of drug discovery. Our lab is very focused on cancer for the most part, but I told Dr. Gray when we first met, or he asked me, what are my career goals. I told him kind of the same story that I told you about my grandfather and the long-term interests. And I told him I'm fine doing cancer drug discovery for my PhD because I'll use these skills that I learned from this to then target Alzheimer's or any other nerve degenerative disease. And he told me, "No, let's figure out a project for you that can allow you to learn drug discovery, but also learn it in a neurospecific context." 

And so my PhD project is actually on Parkinson's disease. I'm trying right now to create a brain selective drug for Parkinson's disease patients. And then yeah, so I'm at the end of the first year of my PhD. I hopefully have two to three-ish more years of my PhD. And then once I finish my PhD, I'll go back to med school and finish up the last two years. I know I want to practice medicine, so I'll be off to residency after that. 

Chelsy Do: Could you share more about your work?

Trae Dunn: I did a lot of different research, growing up. So like I said, I started with basic science, understanding how the nervous system developed in small worms, known as C. elegans. Then, during my gap year, I worked on something that's very personal to me: drug discovery for Alzheimer's disease. Specifically, we looked at targeting tau and that protein's interaction with other proteins.

But here at Stanford, I work on multiple projects, so not just the Parkinson's disease project. That's like my baby, I guess you could think of it. That project specifically is there's a particular protein that's mutated in about 5% of Parkinson's disease patients. It's the most common genetic cause of Parkinson's disease. There are currently therapies being developed by pharmaceutical companies and biotech right now, but the problem is that this protein is not only found in the brain but in the lungs. It's also found in the kidneys etc. and it plays important functions there. And so what these companies have developed is a drug that blocks this protein everywhere.

What we're seeing is that it does have some positive effects obviously for Parkinson's disease patients because of its effectiveness in the brain, but there's also some negative effects because it's targeted in the lungs and then the kidneys etc. And so my goal is to develop the next generation of this type of drug that selectively targets it, either only in the brain or only a mutated version of it, so that we get more selectivity. [So it’s] less likely we're giving patients a drug that cures Parkinson but gives them kidney disease at the same time. That's not the goal at the end of the day. Our goal is to solve one thing and not produce another problem.

Our lab, generally speaking, we try to build new kinds of drugs, and I guess I won't go too much into the details of what that means. I have another project that is more or less trying to characterize or identify unique drugs that bind to things that are typically not druggable. Most drugs that we have on the market, they block enzymes, they block the active sites. But other drugs or other proteins such as transcription factors for instance, these are proteins that make our genes produce proteins that give us maybe our hair color for instance, those are really tough to target. And so my project there is also trying to find these unique new drugs that can bind to these typically unexplored proteins to see if they can provide a therapeutic avenue.

And then lastly, I have a third project which is, I guess in the simplest terms, trying to rewire the brain. And we found–me and a couple other students that I worked with on this project–we found a protein interaction that basically more or less determines if a certain type of neuronal connection forms or not. 

And so in our brain, we have a lot of excitatory connections. We also have a lot of inhibitory connections, and when we think of psychiatric conditions, like let's say epilepsy (when people have seizures), that can be caused by having too much excitatory signal in our brain. What we found is we found a particular drug candidate that if we block this interaction, we can actually increase the formation of the inhibitory synapsis or neuron connections, and so thus we can kind of tune the brain circuitry in the opposite direction. 

And so this can actually be potentially used to treat epilepsy, anxiety, depression, etc. We're really excited about that project and that's just getting off the ground. We're kind of working on designing and actually in this case we actually won't be doing the science ourselves. We actually will be paying other people to do it for us. So kind of in our way operating like a biotech company. And so that's also another exciting opportunity that I have now. And If it doesn't work, I just got a really cool training opportunity learning what is like to run a small startup basically. 

Chelsy Do: That's so cool…When you were talking about your first project [during] your gap year–that was when you were studying tau, right? I also did a science or a research project in my sophomore year, so two years ago. I was at Emory and we were also studying prion-like proteins and their interactions. So that was really cool to hear. I just wanted to say that!

Advice for Aspiring MD/PhDs

Chelsy Do: Awesome, so we can go to the concluding advice kind of thing. Another thing that I found inspirational from your story is that you're also from Georgia. I'm from Peachtree Ridge, so I kind of recognize the different colleges you're naming and stuff. So maybe you can talk about it more generally, or you can connect it to Georgians, or other people from your background specifically: What advice do you have, maybe first for high school students, wanting to pursue higher education or wanting to pursue STEM?

Trae Dunn: Yeah, that's a great question.

I think the first thing is try to have fun. Don't worry–when you first get to college–don't worry so much about the classes you're taking. If things don't go so well in the beginning, you're going to be totally fine. Don't quit. I've talked to a lot of students where they feel that you need to be perfect all the time, and I agree. I felt the exact same way in high school. I was not that great at chemistry. And my first year of college, I was in chemistry, and I was a nervous train wreck. Actually, looking back to my first years of college, all I did was study and I worked in the lab. And I'm not saying I didn't have a good time–maybe that's because I was a nerd–but that's all I did. 

When I went to MIT and I met all these brilliant students from all over the world, they were having fun and I was like, wait a second, why can't I have fun, too? And I ended up realizing that that was totally doable. And so, moral of the story is that when you enter college, one, it's okay to fail in the beginning or not have all the answers or not know what to do. You're going to be fine. And I'll come back to that in a second. 

But two, don't neglect enjoying your college experience, having fun, obviously be safe and be smart, but you can have a balance. You can definitely do well in school, but also do well or not do well, but have a good social life or other things in your life that you find enjoyable. Sadly for me, I didn't realize that till my junior year and I only got to really experience that for one year and then Covid took the other year. So, looking back, that's something I really regret and I wish I did more socializing in my first two years. I think that would have been more enjoyable. 

And that's also another thing is you're basically starting your career and this is a long journey to whatever goal you have in mind. If it's MD/PhD like me, that's a 10-15 year dream. So you can't wait till you get to the end to start enjoying your life. You need to enjoy it from the very beginning, enjoy it throughout, and enjoy it afterwards. And then, going back to the beginning, it's like you're not going to have all the answers, so find people that can be mentors for you. Find students that are a few years ahead of you that have taken the courses. Ask them what worked for them. Find students that are in the dream. If you want to, find grad students at your school or elsewhere, and talk to them, like what did they do? What is their advice? 

I also say this, talk to your faculty members, but I think students are a little bit better here. And the reason why is because most students were just in your shoes not too long ago. So, they can probably resonate more with the struggles that you're going through or some of the courses you're taking. I'm not saying not all faculty can't, but I'm just saying, more likely, a student could. So find those people and keep them in your corner because I think those are going to be people that really give you important feedback. 

And so that's the reason why I offer myself to a lot of students. For instance, Chelsy, for you, I'm happy to help you once you get to college. Anything that you need in terms of MD/PhD, happy to give any advice or any other person that reads the blog. Always happy for them to reach out to me and ask for my input. If I don't know the answer, I'm also going to tell you I don't know the answer because I'm not going to lie to you. I want to make sure that you have the right resources so that you can get to the next step. 

So yeah, in summary, that's my general advice. Have fun. You can have a balance. Then, just find people that are in the shoes that you want to be in and learn from them.

Chelsy Do: All right. Thank you so much, Trae, for your time. These are all the questions that I have. So yeah, thank you for sitting down and taking this time to talk to me.

Trae Dunn: Yeah, no problem. Thanks.

Chelsy Do: Have a great day. Bye.