For those who participated in person, or live on Facebook, thank you for joining us for the 2018 State of the School.
If you were not able to join us, the video of the presentation is available here. You can also review the slide deck from the evening.
Caption for Dr. Kristine Guleserian’s ’80 conversation with Brendan Largay in Coral Gables, Florida (@ 43:37):
“So, one of the memories is I spent a lot of time in the library which was a very tiny little library back then and I remember, I guess if you had records you could check and see how many times I checked out some of the very same books time and time again. One was a book about, I guess the terminology would be about deep nutrition and swallowing. There was a book about how you chew food and swallow food; it came with a microfiche that was in its cover and you could put it into a projector and watch the person swallowing a marshmallow and swallowing a banana that had been coated in a material called barium. You could watch it from the teeth chewing, and swallowing, and I just found that very fascinating and it probably had some influence on why I became a physician. The other memory was that, you know, I don’t know if I was a bossy older sister or just trying to be a leader at a young age, but I would spend recess time teaching the teachers at Belmont Day SchoolI would teach them how to write Armenian letters. I loved my wallpaper book that was used for penmanship, and then I have memories also of arts and crafts and gym. I loved sports, I loved art, and I loved science, all those things together in my formative years at Belmont Day School really set the stage for my future because I still love all of those things. I think because we looked at our teachers as leaders back then, and I think it was a day where, well things have changed a lot in the world. Teachers were always very respected and we were brought up to respect our teachers. They were teaching us important things that were going to be crucial for our future development, for our future educational development, our future development as a human being. Again, I always bring it back to the teachers because they were the leaders that I looked up to, and in return, I love to teach. So as a surgeon now, one of my greatest areas of satisfaction is being able to teach the next generation of surgeons whether they are medical students, fellows, residents, or even let’s step back a bit; I invite high school students to come and watch in the operating room and to make rounds with me so they can see what it’s like.”
