Ethan Brewer is not your typical resident adviser.
Sure, he works out disagreements between roommates, makes sure hallways stay clean and enforces housing rules. But when was the last time you saw an RA teach sutures?
Last fall, Brewer brought out an orange, sliced it and had students in the “Med Mansion” stitch its rind back together. The citrus-spilling procedure is basic training for a future in the medical world, explains Brewer, and he reasons that an encounter with gooey orange guts is preferable to the way he learned suturing: on rat skulls.
Med Mansion residents Chong Pan, Ethan Brewer and lauren McLean (l to r)
Brewer serves as an RA at 24 Bull Street, where two dozen undergraduates – most of them pre-med students – make their home. The Med Mansion (or the Health Professions House, as it is known more formally by the Office of Residence Life and Housing) is one of a number of academically themed residences on Bull Street. Its neighbors include houses dedicated to the study and celebration of French, Spanish, the great outdoors, and women’s and gender studies.
As you walk inside, it seems like any old home in Charleston converted into college apartments, where historic mansion meets dormitory. Except for the fact, that is, that Grey’s Anatomy plays on the common room television a bit more frequently than most places. And for the fact, says Brewer, that molecular diagrams “so complex they will boggle your mind” routinely cover a whiteboard in that same room.
The diagrams are homework for pre-med students’ most dreaded course: organic chemistry. It is a course that weeds out all but the most rigorous students, and it is not unusual for students who earn a passing grade to take the class again for further comprehension. Like electrons in the molecules they study, students bond when taking organic chemistry, often forming groups to do homework. A small room on the fourth floor of the Med Mansion is a favorite spot for such groups to meet, as it provides the peace and quiet necessary for some serious studying.
Med mansion resident Courtney Bieger at the board in the study room
One afternoon in November, Courtney Bieger of Wilton, Conn., was in the study room alone. The large table in front of her was covered with papers, including an organic chemistry textbook, solution manual, notes, answers and scrap paper.
“I’m usually nicer and share space,” she says of her significant study area.
Bieger chose to live in the Med Mansion because she thought it would be easy to find study partners – and, apart from this particular solo session, she is normally joined by others living and breathing all things organic chemistry.
“There’s so much information to learn,” Bieger sighs.
This spring, Brewer is inviting doctors and other medical speakers to the Med Mansion for lectures to residents. It’s yet another way to prep pre-med students for things to come, says the senior from Hemingway, S.C., who plans to earn both a doctorate and medical degree after graduating. Such events can be a much-needed excuse to put down the organic chemistry textbooks and take a breather.
Especially if Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t happen to be on.
