Hello everyone! I’m Suhaas Narayanan, one of the four CASI Interns at the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. I’m a rising junior at Penn, studying Finance and Neuroscience, from Fort Collins, CO. It’s exciting to join the CASI Program to explore both healthcare and a new country in diverse contexts.
A brief bit of background on me: my parents immigrated to the U.S. from Tamil Nadu. Since childhood, I’ve visited multiple times during the summer to see family. I’ve written this post while in Fort Collins and finishing it… quite some time later upon landing in Chennai. Being back in India has been thought-provoking, and I’ve fortunately already seen quite a few relatives in a crowded few days. It’ll be fun connecting with Celeste, Manya, and Aravind in a day or two as well as over this summer-long internship.
Adding to the historical tradition of baby pictures on the CASI Blog, me.
This is an exciting opportunity to really delve into a hospital system. I believe my education relies on gaining new perspectives, and Aravind Eye Hospital offers that in so many ways.
Having worked in a lab and seen the clinical side of healthcare, I’m intrigued by the operations side of medicine. In addition to that, Aravind Eye Hospital offers an unparalleled view into what an excellent standard of care looks like in a different social, economic, and political context. The insights I gain will help me understand and critique various systems, in healthcare and outside of it. I’m excited for the following weeks, but there is a degree of nervousness associated with it all. The food, the language, the people: all of it is both new and familiar.
Thankfully, I have no idea how this summer will unravel.
Suhaas Narayanan
[Editing creds to Manya]
[Photo & child creds to my mom]
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