Ryan Smith '08 works as a medical intern in Guadalajara

Ask Bennington alumni to recount their most remarkable tales from their college years, and you're likely to hear yarns about outrageously imaginative faculty and fellow students; ingenious and unlikely social events; the "aha" moments that shaped their own work and lives.

But you'll also hear tales from across the country and across the globe--set in political campaigns and research laboratories, law offices and art museums, hospitals and theaters, newspapers and national parks. That's because, for each year they attend the College, Bennington students must go out into the world to complete seven-week winter internships in areas that fascinate them and complement their studies.

Field Work Term, going strong since the College's founding, brings new stories each year. Here's one such tale from FWT 2007. Stay tuned for more over the next few weeks.

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When Ryan Smith ’08 arrived at Hospital 110 in Guadalajara, Mexico, he had two and a half years’ worth of Bennington coursework under his belt. He was close to completing his pre-med requirements, and he had spent his sophomore year Field Work Term at a clinic in Guatemala. His ultimate goal: to become a doctor. His immediate goal: to take full advantage of the weeks to come, his seven weeks as a medical intern.

He knew that immersing himself in the hospital setting was bound to yield some invaluable hands-on experience. What he didn’t know was just how intense and very hands-on that experience was going to be.

Events unfolded as follows:

January 2007. Ryan is welcomed warmly at Hospital 110 of Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (Mexican Institute of Social Security) and shown the ropes.

He starts out his internship administering vaccinations and measuring people.

Soon he moves on to doing pap smears.

Then to collecting samples in the bacteriology lab.

Then to working in immunology.

Then to drawing blood and working in the blood bank.

Then to observing surgeries and births.

And finally—on February 2, in Week 6 of a Field Work Term that began with questions like “How do you stain microscope slides?” and “How do I even say ‘microscope slides’ in Spanish?”—Ryan Smith delivers a baby.

How does a 21-year-old undergraduate find himself in a birthing room with a newborn infant in his hands? How does he prepare for that?

“It’s funny,” he says, “but before I started working at the hospital, I didn’t realize I was slightly squeamish around other people’s blood. So part of preparing for the experience, even though it seems like a minor task, was the process of getting accustomed to the sight of a lot of blood.

“I also watched over 20 births while I was there. I did some reading, and they taught me the Leopold Maneuver, which is how they ascertain the position of the baby and know which direction to turn the head when it comes out.” Ryan had no idea how soon he was going to put all this knowledge into practice. “One day the resident asked me, ‘Do you want to deliver a baby?' I said, ‘Yeah, someday.’ And he said, ‘OK, you’re going to deliver this one.’

“I was nervous—but this was something I really wanted to do. They had me put on the gown…and even though by this point I’d seen it a lot beforehand, it wasn’t worth anything until I actually did it myself. It was a totally different experience. I was shaking afterwards—it was the reality of life.”

The intensity of the experience—not only the delivery, but his entire seven weeks—has stayed with Ryan. “Learning to practice medicine and interacting in a Spanish-speaking environment at once was difficult, and at times it was overwhelming. It was the first time I had been to Mexico. I was moved by the warmth of the people and how patient they were with me. I was living, instead of touring, another culture. I started to grow roots there. I’d go back in a heartbeat.”

It was also over the course of those seven weeks, Ryan says, that he began to see his coursework in a new light. Bennington students design their own educations through a structure called the Plan Process, which involves a series of reflective essays and ongoing meetings with faculty. As part of that process, students usually draw connections between the various disciplines they are studying, with insights from one class often shedding light on another. Until his Field Work Term at Hospital 110, Ryan says, he hadn’t made any connections between the three main areas he was studying: chemistry, Spanish, and theater. “And that was okay; I wasn’t going to force any strained connections between them if they simply weren't there. I enjoyed them all, and I knew they all contributed to my education in their own way. But suddenly it fell together, and it just blew me away.”

It was at the moment of actually seeing a baby being born—watching a new life come into the world—that Ryan realized what was at the core of everything he studies: a fascination with human life. Life’s most basic building blocks merge and move in the study of chemistry. The emotional narratives of human life are played out in theater. The nuances of human interaction through speech and language and culture are examined through the study of Spanish. And each of these elements—physical body, emotions and psyche, relationship to others—is shared by every person who has ever walked the earth.

“I had this moment of realizing, Wow, hello, I’ve got a baby in my hands, and the mother is smiling, the baby is crying, and it happens the same way all over the world. What I’m interested in is learning about life—this human life, how we are all essentially the same, and all so very different. It confirmed everything I want to do.”

More:

• What is Field Work Term?
• A sampler of some recent FWT jobs
• Science at Bennington
• The Postbaccalaureate Premedical Program
• Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social

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