Alumni highlight: Jeeva Palanisamy reflects on his undergrad experiences at ICD as he starts Internal Medicine residency at Mayo Clinic
Dr. Jeeva Palanisamy graduated from medical school at the University of Minnesota earlier this year and started his residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester this summer. Palanisamy grew up in Plymouth, MN and studied at the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate, majoring in both Neuroscience and Child Psychology (now Developmental Psychology). Here he reflects on both his undergraduate years and gap years, which were spent at ICD.
Q&A with Dr. Jeeva Palanisamy
Tell us about how you decided to major in child/developmental psychology.
The most important thing in selecting a major for me was my interest in the topic. In high school, I loved a lot of my biology courses and my one AP psych course. With med school as the ultimate goal, I knew I needed a lot of science-based prerequisites. Neuroscience was the only interesting major in the College of Biological Sciences to me but I also wanted to build on that. Neuroscience seemed like a very micro view of the brain - super granular and down to the anatomy and chemical level. I wanted to complement that with a more macro overview. Developmental psych offered just that; a perfect layer to add on to better try and understand the mysteries of the human brain.
Dr. Jeeva Palanisamy
What experiences at ICD do you feel best prepared you for medical school?
Research - see below! There was a lot of group work and team-based learning through ICD, which was helpful in building good habits for med school. It also helped me learn to work and communicate effectively with many diverse individuals at different stages in their careers, from undergrads, to grad students, all the way up to distinguished department heads. I also gained a ton of experience in reading and appraising research studies, which is super important to be a great physician.
What kind of research were you involved in at ICD?
I had wonderful research (and general life) mentors in Drs. Stephanie Carlson and Philip Zelazo. They helped bring me into the world of research as a freshman and saw me through my gap years as their lab manager. I truly had a great experience with all of their grad students and postdoctoral fellows, getting involved in a few projects during my time there. I gained invaluable and varied experience including running children through behavioral tasks, coding data, analyzing data and writing up the results. I was even able to present a poster at a research conference in Austin, TX! I think research is crucial to developing your own spirit of academic inquiry as well as help give a sense of what any kind of career associated with an academic institution can look like.
Tell us a little bit about your journey through medical school, where you are now, and what you hope to do in your medical career?
I started med school during COVID, so that was an interesting start. It was definitely a lot of work and the first two years (pre-clinical/classroom years) even more since it was primarily lectures/exams like undergrad. The last two years made that work so much more rewarding, as you started to apply that hard-earned knowledge to actual patient care. Throughout the journey, I think it’s important to realize how much privilege it takes to make it in medicine and then practice medicine, seeing patients at many different stages of their health journey. I applied for residency in Internal Medicine (IM) with an interest in being a generalist, either primary care or hospitalist, to further my interests in building longitudinal relationships with patients and working on preventive healthcare. Of course pediatrics and psychiatry were considerations given my undergraduate background, but there are pieces of both fields that pushed me more towards IM. In my first few months of residency, I have definitely grown a ton and the learning never stops! Ultimately, in addition to my medical practice, I still want to maintain a tie to some form of teaching, whether that be with medical school or residents.
Anything else you'd like to share?
Happy to field emails from anyone who has questions or wants advice! Undergraduate Academic Advisor Meghan Allen Eliason helped me a ton when I was there and can pass along my contact information as needed.
Getting into medical school is the hardest part - sometimes it just takes a lot of perseverance and a little bit of luck. Try to find extracurriculars that you’re passionate about and stick with them for more than a year, showing growth throughout that longitudinal experience.