Women Engineers: Many Paths to a Rewarding Life
Sarah Moll ’99
Medical Student
“There are a whole bunch of issues that women struggle with. You’ve worked really hard to get this degree . . . but you want to have a family. It’s absolutely possible and there are a hundred different ways to do it.”
B.S. in Biomedical Engineering '99
M.S. from University of Pennsylvannia
Currently a medical student at Thomas Jefferson University.
I started at BU in biochemistry thinking that I was going to go to medical school, then during first semester freshman year, decided – in case I didn’t want to do med school –what were my options as a biochem major?
I was good at math, it would be nice job security, so I switched to engineering the second semester of my freshman year. Med school fell out of favor in my mind. I really liked the senior research project I was doing with [BME professor] Joyce Wong.
I went to graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania directly after undergrad and got a master’s in bioengineering. Then I went on to work for a pharmaceutical company for four years.
Then, I went back to thoughts of freshman year, wanting to go to medical school. What brought me back to the idea was having more autonomy in my professional career and more patient care.
It’s a scary undertaking, going back to school.
In medical school, my engineering background definitely helps in thinking through problems; when presented with a patient with certain symptoms, the logic you use, the thinking. You’re trained as an engineer to think a certain way, and it’s absolutely an advantage in medical school.
I am currently in my third year of medical school. I took one year off between second and third year to have my daughter and spend some time raising her. There are a whole bunch of issues that women struggle with. You worked really hard to get this degree, you are really smart from it, you are given wonderful opportunities, but you want to have a family. It’s absolutely possible and there are a hundred different ways to do it.
