Casey aka "Chesi"

Life thus far has been pretty interesting.

I was born in Germany and lived there, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and upstate New York all before I was six. I stayed in New York through high school. Once I graduated I moved to Siena, Italy instead of going to college. There I volunteered, trained as a paramedic, taught English, and helped the Diabetes Association at the hospital. I learned to speak Italian, badly, and had an all-around fantastic time meeting new people while doing interesting new things.

After one year I came back to the US where I earned my BA in Italian Literature and Education at Haverford College. This degree was (un)surprisingly useless for finding work after I graduated, so I found myself living in Italy again. This time I was near Venice working at an English school. I led certain initiatives including a Cineforum, field trip to London, and the creation of a new curriculum for a lecture series to be delivered by native English speakers at the local elementary schools. During this time I became fluent in Italian, learned how to dance salsa, milked a cow, and worked as an interpreter at the Venice Film Festival.

In the spring of 2011 I learned about the entry exam to San Raffaele, a medical school in Milan, and decided to give it a shot. I earned a spot in the exclusive international MD program, but a series of unfortunate circumstances involving the suicide of the hospital's head of finance, economic crisis in Italy, and a possible take-over by the Vatican led me to decline the offer. Unfortunately, this was not before I gave up both my job and my apartment, so I returned to the US, my whole life having fallen apart.

Slowly I put my life back together, applying to medical schools in the Carribbean and Ireland while picking up a variety of part-time or temporary jobs: tutoring high school students in geometry, hosting at a restaurant, and working as an assistant in the mortgage department of a bank. In the spring of 2012, less than one year after I was accepted to San Raffaele, I was accepted to medical school again and so began 5 long years at NUIG.

Following graduation I stumbled through intern year after which I progressed quickly on to specialty training in Paediatrics, where I am now. I spend a lot of time making kids cry in the process of making them feel better, but there are at least as many smiles and cuddles to make it all worthwhile. I don't know yet exactly where I'll end up, but it's going to be good.