Celebrating women in STEMM
In celebration of International Day of Women and Girls in Science, Professor Christina Mitchell, Academic Vice-President and Dean, Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences was one of four outstanding female Monash researchers who shared their stories of struggle and success.
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I wanted to be an architect. My father, a general practitioner, convinced me I had to do medicine, and he was right. Then I wanted to be the world’s best doctor, a big hero like on the TV programs. I didn’t want to do a PhD -- I’d already done six years of medicine, five years of post-intern training, my specialty exams, and I was two-thirds of the way through my specialty training in haematology. I never wanted to sit another exam as long as I lived! But my first real mentor, Barry Firkin, said to me, “The basis for all medicine is evidence, and you can’t be a great physician unless you understand evidence. You really need to do some research.” So I agreed to do a year of research.
I had been looking after 50-60 patients a day, working 24-hour shifts three nights a week. So much drama and so little sleep! This was an entirely new world. If I got the experiment wrong, no one was going to die! I liked it so much that I stayed in and finished the PhD. Then my supervisor convinced me to go do a postdoc in the US. All my friends were doctors, making a great living and securing their future and there I was, an impoverished postdoc living in St Louis, purifying enzymes and cloning genes in a laboratory, far from the clinic.
Back in Australia, I got a job with my PhD supervisor, who was a great mentor, as an academic senior lecturer in a small suburban hospital. He was so confident I should keep doing research and I would be successful. I balked. “I won’t get a grant, I can’t do research, it’s all impossible!” He told me to try anyway. I did, one thing led to another, and here I am, 25 years later, still funded by grants. I’ve been incredibly lucky. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I had very good mentors. If you had spoken to me as the intern, I would have said, “I’ll end up as a good doctor and then I’m not going to do anything else.”
I used to worry that I wasn’t good enough, that I wouldn’t make it. It all seemed so daunting. One friend from medical school who was much cleverer than I was, but who never moved upwards in her career, asked me how I kept getting jobs. “I apply for them,” I answered. I didn’t always think I’d get them, but I applied for them. So just do it! Try different things, and don’t worry. It will all work out.
Professor Christina Mitchell
Academic Vice-President and Dean, Medicine Nursing and Health Sciences
Read the full article on Lens.
The full article includes stories from Professor Moira O’Bryan, Head of the School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science; Professor Elizabeth Croft, Dean Faculty of Engineering; and Professor Maria Garcia De La Banda, Faculty of Information Technology.