Field hockey is a very big sport down there. It was a great learning experience. And the learning will continue for Maureen O'Brien. She spent her first summer away from home, living in Cambridge and working on an independent study in a lab at Harvard Medical School, in addition to the Australia trip. Originally, I was working on a preliminary thesis, but I have since decided that it is not going to work out.
Scientific research can be really frustrating.
I've done nine months of experiments and a lot of it hasn't worked. But I did get exposed to a lot of other opportunities besides medicine. I prefer the interaction with people as a doctor to working in a lab in a hospital. So whatever is in the future for O'Brien, whether it be a field hockey game against defending champion Princeton, or perhaps even her own pediatory practice, she sure has enough to keep those gears spinning.