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Medical Student
Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons
New York, New York, United States
Caroline Cole
Medical Student, Columbia Univeristy Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons
I am originally from Peterborough, ON, Canada. I moved to New York City in 2009 to pursue a Master's of Music in Harp Performance at The Juilliard School and worked as a professional musician across the U.S. and Canada. I have been passionate about science and medicine since I was a child, and working extensively in music outreach programs prompted my decision to leave music and pursue medicine as a career. Music continues to be an important part of my life and the idea of helping people with hearing and communicating with the world feels profoundly meaningful. However, it wasn’t until I fell in-love with head and neck anatomy and did an otolaryngology rotation that I solidified my decision to pursue this exciting field. Given my lack of science background, I chose to take a research year in a basic science laboratory (completed in February) so that I could grow as a scientist and learn more about ongoing areas of research in otolaryngology. I was fortunate to find outstanding mentorship at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in Dr.'s Michael Pitman, MD and Yalda Moayedi, PhD, and am honored to have been a part of their laboratories. Research has given me a sense of how one can contribution to the field at large, which I aspire to do in both the clinical and basic science setting over the course of my career. I will be applying into Otolaryngology residency programs this coming fall.