Student Profile of
Sandhya Krishnan – second-year WISE RP student

Nineteen-year old Sandhya Krishnan, who was born in California, has lived all over the world: Scotland, India, and Malaysia. For the past ten years, she and her younger brother and parents have lived in West Bloomfield, Michigan. Although she was also admitted to Johns Hopkins, Sandhya fell in love with the University of Michigan after a campus visit. She chose the WISE RP as a first-year student because she thought she would feel more comfortable living with other studious students and her parents were more comfortable with her living in an all-female hall. Sandhya liked the WISE RP so much, she returned for her sophomore year. She has met her best friends in the WISE RP and has participated in a program that pairs WISE RP students with U of M medical students.

At the end of her first year, Sandhya returned to India to visit family and also to participate in a unique opportunity: shadowing physicians who worked with the rural poor not far from her family’s home town. She and her grandfather moved to a one room apartment for the duration of her internship which not only gave her a chance to fulfill her strong desire to help others but also to spend some quality time with her grandfather with whom she is very close. She began her experience with an endocrinologist but ultimately she met a neurosurgeon and his residents who took her under their wing. They were so impressed with Sandhya’s enthusiasm and dedication, they invited her to scrub in on surgeries. From that moment on, Sandhya was smitten. What began as a one-month internship extended into a seven-week once in a lifetime experience.

Once back in Ann Arbor in the fall of 2005, Sandhya contacted the neurosurgery department at the U of M where she quickly established solid relationships with some of the attending physicians and their resident staff. In particular, she works with Drs. Garton and Muraszko from whom she has not only learned a great deal about neurosurgery, but more importantly, how to be a wonderful human being. While juggling the rigors of her neuroscience major, Sandhya typically works fourteen hours per week shadowing the surgeons in the operating room and in their busy clinics.

The WISE RP is fortunate to have Sandhya and many more like her, in their community!

February 2006 eNews