june meeting

amsa june meeting has been a part of my life since M1 year. it's basically a big meeting where most everyone on national leadership (board of trustees and action committees) get together and plan the rest of the year. it's also a space to be inspired, rejuvenated, and to love and be loved for your work and your commitment to health justice. my amsa friends have definitely been some of my closest friends over the past four years and it's been great to have a national network/family behind you.

this is the first year i've been a chair (or project manager, as it's known in corporate america) on the action committee side of things. this means that i make sure work gets done among my five coordinators (all fab, of course!), offer support to them and others in national leadership throughout the year on issues of policy & programming, and represent GHAC at-large on the AC Executive Committee. it's a big job, and i'm happy to fill it, although i did waver back and forth on whether to run from abroad quite a bit. (thanks to chris for listening to me do this and continuing to bear the brunt of my vacillation on all things AMSA). overall, i LOVE AMSA and think it's really super awesome, but sometimes it's difficult to keep things in perspective while also being a fourth year med student, wife, daughter, and friend, among other things.

june meeting was AMAZING in a lot of ways. i finally got to meet my committee and run my first meeting as ghac chair. i think i did the best job i could, but know there's a lot of room for improvement, and really need to work on following-up with people to make sure deadlines get met. the best thing about committee time is that i think that our committee really bonded together and that we gained an appreciation for each other not just as friends, but also as activists. ghac continues to grow bigger and better as the years go on, and i'm very excited to be a part of the energy with a brand new group of coordinators as we start off another academic year. i feel like i have so much to learn from each person on my committee and that i'm very inspired and excited to support them in all their work this year. being a chair is also a great chance to reflect on my experiences within AMSA leadership, and i was reminded even more of this when i looked over my speech to run for chair, which i've cut and pasted below for those of you who weren't at national convention this past year:

Hi everyone! Thanks for coming to GHAC org time, whether it’s to run for a national position, support a friend that’s running, or just to check things out. I really appreciate all of you being here, especially since it’s near the end of conference, and you all must be exhausted from speakers, workshops, meeting new people, and hopefully, being inspired by fellow students and activists. I’m really sad that I can’t be there in person today (this is the first conference I haven’t been to since 2004!), but my thoughts are all with you from Chiang Mai, Thailand. If you haven’t noticed yet, being part of GHAC usually means you have friends to visit in cool places.

My name is Tanya Wansom and I attended my first national conference three years ago, ran for the HIV/AIDS coordinator position, and never looked back. I’ve been involved with GHAC for the past three years as a coordinator for two years and an editor for Global Pulse this past year. AMSA has given me a lot of opportunities to grow – as a leader, an activist, and a community organizer – and I’m excited at the prospect of running for GHAC Chair, where I can support the future generation of AMSA leadership using my past national experience and also make sure that the general membership keeps getting more involved.

As chair, my main duties are to support my coordinators, represent GHAC to the larger national AMSA leadership (including the president, Board of Trustees, and other AC committees), and make sure the general membership at large knows what’s going on and how to get involved. I’d like to bring back general GHAC monthly newsletters on the listserv and look into starting an AMSA GHAC blog where everyone can post articles on different topics and activities that are going on in different regions. Also, I’d focus on institutionalizing many of the liaison positions we have with other professional global health organizations (and expanding them) to make sure there were more opportunities for students to study, work, and find mentors abroad. Most importantly, I’m happy to hear about what you – as a GHAC member – would like to see GHAC working on or doing in the coming year.

GHAC has, and will continue to be, a powerhouse in AMSA. I hope you give me the opportunity, as chair, to build on the work that so many people have contributed to over the years. Thank you.

AMSA has definitely been one of the defining experiences of my medical school career. I'm especially happy to serve on AC Exec with many friends from over the years, including some of us who had taken a year off (Catherine Jones, Community & Public Health Chair & Vishad Sukul, Humanistic Med Chair). Michigan Med also has an amazingly strong presence this year on AC Exec with three members on the board (me, Michelle Debbink, HPAC Chair, and Andrea, LGBT CHair). Andrea and I had the opportunity to get to know each other *a lot* better after spending five hours waiting for a flight together, which ended up getting delayed to the next morning due to 1) a tornado and 2) a computer glitch that shut down everything on the East Coast. andrea and i also roomed together with Catherine and Laura (also on LGBT HAC) and affectionately named our room the 'lame-o' room as we are all not so into partying, drinking, and staying up really late (although we inevitably do anyway). we are into changing into our pajamas really early, trying to go to bed early, and waking up early to eat breakfast (hence the lame-o term).

anyway, besides being a lame-o at amsa meeting & riding the grandma bus home early after actually going out to washington, dc, i was really happy to meet new AMSA peeps and reconnect with old ones. i really like the group of people im working with on AC Exec this year and feel loved and supported by most of them. i also got to see some of my old fave peoples (albeit briefly) at June meeting including Casey (RT), Davekumar, and Kevin Burns. being back into the AMSA swing of things has helped me readjust to my life back in the US and given me a place to channel a lot of my energy and enthusiasm for the year. it's also been a source of some (good and bad) stress, namely in the forms of trying to set up basecamp (this online networking tool) for my committee and also as a last-minute invite to speak at the US Social Forum in Atlanta this coming up week. I'm totally honored to be asked to be one of the AMSA reps at the USSF, but it was really stressful to buy a ticket, find a hotel room at the last minute, etc. In any case, I'm excited to participate in the International People's Health University, a four-day short course on health justice and organizing, and to speak at an Access to Medicines panel at the conference itself. I will also be meeting up with fabulous AMSA peeps Dan Murphy (now the legislative affairs director), Anjali Taneja, Kevin Burns, and Catherine Jones. Hopefully I won't have as many problems getting to Atlanta as I did going to Philly & DC on earlier trips this month.

ups and downs

since my sub-i has ended and i've been on a 'vacation' month (meaning im not registered for any rotation at my school), i've felt like i've really run the gamut of emotions since i've actually had time to think about being back in the US, process a little about Thailand, and get used to my role(s) as daughter, medical student, sister, and friend again. nothing too extreme, though. my life has definitely been in a lot of flux lately - starting fourth year with a different class, sending many of my friends off to different areas of the country, and figuring out what my responsibilities are (and what i want them to be) regarding the million-and-one extracurricular activities that i have gotten myself into over the past four years. a lot of times these activities - especially AMSA - are the ones that have kept me sustained and focused throughout my medical school career, bu they can also be the source of stress, frustration, and the feeling that i've gotten myself into deep.

my year off was good to give me a sense of perspective. i didn't keep that perspective for too long though and jumped back into a VA sub-i, where i was kept busy for most of the hours of that one month rotation. when it ended, i realized i had a lot more free time (which was supposed to be used for Step 2 studying), but ended up being devoted to what i affectionately refer to as 'life maintenance' instead. don't get me wrong - im definitely studying for step 2 - but im also traveling A LOT (more than i would like). during the month of june, i will have been to Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Atlanta, all on separate trips. more on each trip below:

1) Philadelphia. i attempted to go to my five-year college reunion at Swarthmore with Chris almost immediately after i got off last call at the va. our flight ended up being delayed a few hours due to weather on the East Coast and then cancelled altogether. chris got a flight attendant to schedule us on a direct flight for the next day (Saturday) arriving at 3 pm. i was exhausted and frustrated with the whole ordeal and really wanted to eat breakfast at one of our fave ann arbor spots, northside grill, the next morning. we ate there and then hustled to the airport to catch our flight. in the airport parking lot, i (finally) noticed that i had accidentally left my purse at the restaurant and did not have any id. we tried to call my brother to have him pick up the purse to no avail. chris was less-than-happy and tried to go talk to an agent about getting on another flight. i felt like maybe it wasnt meant to be and we shouldnt go at all.

the agent said i could fly without an id (you just had to go through secondary screening). i was stuck in secondary screening for awhile and had to run to the gate. i almost missed my flight to philadelphia (where i had been upgraded to first class). this whole incident reminded me of the first time i met chris (less the id part) since it involved running in an airport, chris arguing with a flight agent, and us sitting on opposite ends of the plane.

the swarthmore reunion was okay but i had missed 90% of the events for the weekend and we ended up not being in the philly area for very long - a little over 24 hours. a lot of my friends from swarthmore that i haven't seen since graduation also were not able to make it. however, i did get to hang out with some of my favorite people from tri-co, had a little reunion with people in medicine from my class, and spent some QT with bryan. highlights of the weekend included:

-just being on campus again and being super jealous of the new science center and wondering what happened to parrish (nice student lounge, though!)
-eating a huge bowl of pho for $4.95 at xe lua in philadelphia's chinatown
-breakfast at java joe's in woodlyn
-buying more swarthmore paraphernalia (chris even got a swarthmore t-shirt...the swat fever is taking over :) )
-meeting geoff semenuk, the associate director of alumni relations, who ive been chatting with online for the past month or so. he introduced me to some cool alum who are at the CDC that gave me interesting advice/perspectives about different ways to pursue public health careers.
-catching up with some of my old bio profs
-walking in the crum woods with chris
-a wawa sub and lemonade-iced tea
-king of prussia shopping spree

overall, a good weekend, but a little disappointing in terms of timing, not being able to see all my friends, and wishing i couldve spent more time in philadelphia.

next trip - AMSA june meeting, reston, va. (im doing this as a separate post because i think things will get wayyy too long).