Jim Amidon — I’ve enjoyed reading all of the blog entries from our students doing on-campus research, traveling on Dill grants, studying in the Business Leaders Program, and those who are involved in various internships on and off campus.
 
Usually the snapshots we get from students are bad and don’t really indicate the depth or nature of their work. In fact, we usually get pretty bad mug shots of our guys standing in front landmarks or recognizable buildings.
 
(Many of our students take the photos themselves – an arm extended far away and an out-of-proportion face tilted one way or the other.)
 
I’ve been following along with Kevin McCarthy’s summer experience in a rural medicine internship in Eastern Kentucky. We’ve not published Kevin’s work, but he has shared a number of his journal entries.
 
I’ve discovered that the All-American distance runner and pre-med student is also a really fine writer. While his journal entries tend to be stream of consciousness — with all that means in terms of spelling, grammar, and punctuation — Kevin is tremendously perceptive.
 
He studies the subtleties of the environments he inhabits, which range from mountainside trailers with trash piled high to local schools to the fishing tackle section at the local Walmart. He’s also very descriptive as a writer, and the combination of perception and description make for fun reading.
 
I hope Kevin will submit an essay about his summer in rural medicine that we can publish on the website or in Wabash Magazine. Or perhaps he’ll allow us to publish some excerpts from his terrific journal entries.
 
Not many Wabash students spend their summer doing the kind of work Kevin is doing. He’s in some rough places dealing with off-the-chart levels of obesity, diabetes, all sorts of cancers, and poverty. He’s observed midwives, bariatric surgery, and home health care.
 
He was very nearly taken out by a rattlesnake, too.
 
Yep, I’m talking rural medicine. In the mountains of Eastern Kentucky. Where local guard dogs chase Kevin every place he goes and when he finally has time to stretch out his legs, he runs up against a potentially deadly timber rattler.
 
Kevin did the smart thing — he got the heck out of there and went for help. After finding a guy with lots of experience dealing with snakes, Kevin returned to the spot where he found the snake and, moments later, well, there was no more snake.
 
While we don’t have photos of Kevin involved in rural medicine, he did send a few shots of the dead snake. (We are sorry, though, that Kevin didn’t get in close and pose with the viper.)
 
And maybe that’s because Kevin later found out that in those parts, where there’s one rattlesnake, there is usually a second one nearby.
 
That ought to keep Kevin on his toes… and running quickly.
 
In the mean time, he’s gaining valuable pre-med experience by seeing all aspects of healthcare in a rural community. And as one of the only men involved in this particular program, Kevin sees opportunities for a stronger Wabash connection in the future.