Beyond the Lectures
The humidity wraps Caroline and I as we sit on a scratched bench at the Columbus Circle subway platform, grumbling in complaint. It’s only our first month at Mailman, and we’ve been assigned hundreds of pages to read. A smiling shorthaired woman approaches the two of us.
“You two go to Columbia?” She asks, noticing our Mailman School t-shirts.
We tell her that we’re new students just starting our semester, and she asks us about the program. We give an enthusiastic but exhausted reply.
Laughing, she tells us that she’s an alumna of Mailman’s epidemiology program who’s returned to the city for a new job. We ask her what she does now, hoping to peer into our future. She says her name is Michelle Kiely and she’s recently become the Associate Dean of Research for the City University of New York’s School of Public Health.
After some banter on the subway, Kiely passes along this advice, “In theory, theory is perfect. But in practice, it rarely is.”
We exit the subway at 110th street and meet several students from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism by the Harlem Meer in Central Park. Our conversation leads to an intersection of public health and journalism, and they start telling us about reporting on synthetic marijuana. A colorfully packaged synthetic substance called 'Spice' promises a safe high, but gives users symptoms that range from hallucinations to heart attacks.
While they discuss the issues surrounding synthetic marijuana, I wonder—how many of these health hazards are discovered first by journalists? How many non-public health professionals are involved in improving health?
“I’m in awe,” my friend Caroline says to the group, “of the intellect and backgrounds that I come across here. It’s exciting. It’s getting to learn with people who are at that same level of passion or beyond.”
Later in the semester, my friend Audrey and I meet an architect named Cathy who’s involved in improving the quality of life for the homeless. We met at the Morningside Lights event held by Columbia’s Miller Theatre.
Cathy's first assignment at her architecture firm was planning a new building for the homeless. Now, she works closely with CAMBA housing ventures and she passionately explained the need for permanent housing.
“They’re already so immersed in these fields in a very professional, serious way,” Audrey tells me later, referring to the people we’ve met. “They’re just doing it.”
It’s easy as a student to find yourself shackled to a desk and your lessons, limited to the classroom and a textbook. But being at Mailman and in New York has also allowed me to meet different people who have taken on the problems directly, realizing the need to go beyond theory.
Some of them have a MPHs. Some of them don’t. Yet they’re all essential to the practice of public health, because they advance the field outside of what is taught in class.
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