Medical students' talent show to display diverse acts, including songs and traditional dances

Joshua Elder is going to become a doctor.

Tomorrow, Elder, a fourth-year medical student, will find out where he’ll be attending residency, a stage of graduate medical training when medical students train at a hospital or clinic in another city, sometimes across the country. But as for tonight, he’ll be doing something he’s been doing since he was in high school: singing.

Between taking board examinations, attending class and auditioning for residency, any time Elder has just 10 minutes to spare, he will pick up his guitar and strum a couple of Tyrone Wells tunes. Tonight, he’ll be performing at the David Geffen School of Medicine’s 15th annual talent show.

“This year represents a very different place. I’m essentially done with medical school now. “¦ This (event) will be happening the day before I find out where I’ll be going for the next three to four years of my life,” Elder said. “It’ll be nice to take my mind off of what’s happening the next day.”

This year’s theme is “A Night At The OSCEs,” in reference to the Oscars. OSCEs are a type of hands-on examination used in the health sciences, in which the medical school hires professional actors to play the role of patients, and students have to diagnose the patients.

The talent show will feature medical students of all years, and performances range from acoustic sets and piano pieces to dances such as the traditional Chinese Wushu.

First-year medical student Christine Thang, the organizer of the event, said the show counters the assumption that all medical students do is study.

“It’s cool to see how diverse (in talent) our class is,” Thang said. “When they talk about well-rounded medical students, it’s what we have here, giving students opportunities to share their talents with peers. It’s nice to get away from the books and studying, and it’s nice to show another side of our medical students.”

Elder, who has performed twice in the talent show and also organized and emceed the event his first year, said that, although medical school and singing contrast with each other, he believes medicine is very much an art.

“I think people are attracted to medicine when you are interested in the arts because medicine is a mix of art and science. For me the art is research; my creative abilities for music have fit in with medicine at different times. I didn’t expect that as much,” Elder said.

The event will be held at the Neuropsychiatric Institute Auditorium as opposed to a venue like Royce Hall. Meredith Szumski, a faculty member at the medical school who oversees everything from admissions to well-being events, said the small size of the venue, which can hold a couple hundred people, is beneficial because the setting is intimate.

“The auditorium has a junior high, “˜Napoleon Dynamite’ kind of feel. Everybody can pile into the room. It’s kind of like you’re at camp.” Szumski said.

Thang said that the talent show allows each class of medical students to come together and share something that they love doing with their peers.

“There’s so much to learn from these people and remembering the human aspect of everyone. Yeah, they’re becoming doctors but at the same time, they’re more than that,” Thang said.

Because medicine is his focus and career, Elder said that music is more of a hobby than vocation.

“I think I can be an emergency medicine physician and have a band on the side. There’s a lot of different ways I can go with it. … Music will always be in my life in some capacity, (but) it’s probably going to be limited by my responsibilities as a physician,” Elder said.