1990
Ophthalmic plastic surgeon
English was my second major at Duke. I was a pre-med majoring in chemistry. But I had a fabulous high school English teacher for two years and she inspired all of us to continue to build the foundation she started. And so starting my junior year at Duke, I took 2 English classes each semester to fulfill the major requirements. I simply enjoyed reading poetry and literature and having a forum to discuss it. In addition, these were my only classes that required me to write papers, which was great experience to have someone critique my writing. In my academic career as a full time Harvard Medical School faculty, I have written 4 text book and over 160 peer-reviewed publications. Scientific writing is of course different in many ways that other writing, but the foundations are similar, requiring careful organization of thoughts, etc. One of the academic achievements that I am most proud of is being the Editor-in-Chief of the medical journal Orbit for 4.5 years. I'm currently enjoying Emeritus EIC status from journal, but it was an intense time period, that I believe was possible due to my confidence not only in the subject matter but my strong background in reading and writing from my English degree.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanne-freitag-7b4a47179/
English Department