Interview Series Part 1: Laura Interviews Sarah

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Hi. This is Laura Vandercamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist, and speaker. And this is Sarah Hart Hunger. I'm a mother of three, a practicing physician and blogger. On the side, we are two working parents who love our careers and our families. Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about how real women manage work, family, and time for fun. From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals. We want you to get the most out of life. Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura. This is episode one hundred and seventy two. For this episode and the next one, borring unforeseen developments, Sarah and I are going to be interviewing each other. I know you all know a lot about each of us because we've blogged for a great many years and talked about our lives. But hopefully we can come up with at least a few things that you don't already know about us. So for this episode, I'm going to start interviewing Sarah. So you ready, I am ready? All right? Well, the questions aren't that hard. This isn't really a gotcha interview style program, but as some people remember, Sarah, you grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, not far in fact from where I live, so I'm about four miles from your parents, I believe at this point. But since you grew up in the Philly suburbs, what did you order at Wahwah when you would go there? I'm going to be so disappointing. I don't really think we ever went to wah Wah really, oh gosh. But right down the street from wahwa was Rita's water Ice and I went there all the time. So is that like a good that's a good substitute. So what was your favorite Rita's water Ice order? Yeah? My favorite was and probably still is, although we don't have a Rita's nearby to check it out. Would be the lemon but with the vanilla custard like layered with it. Yes, the jilatti or whatever they call it. Yeah, yes, yes, exactly, very and I think Rita's is in more places now, but it definitely got to start in Philadelphia. So yes, yeah, just like Wawah. And did you have a Jersey shore town that you guys would go to? Yes? I had two, actually, so my best friend from camp their family used to rent houses in Cape May, so I would go there with her by myself, feeling like a really grown up, like eighth grader or something with her family, and that was really fun. And then my later, like more towards the high school years, my uncle bought a house in Avalon and so they still own it and it's like their baby. And so that's when my family goes to the Jersey tour, we stay at their house in Avalon. It's it's lovely and I haven't been in way too long. Betime, do you have any favorite boardwalk foods? I like the samples of fudge, Like I've never actually purchase the food, but like you just go get the samples and you never actually purchase, Okay, budge. When I mentioned this, I'm thinking about like nineteen ninety three here, So this is like the younger family goes to visit the beach and they're like, walk in and get the samples and then walk right out. The younger family has yet to experience the Jersey Shore actually, so because I mean, we do have a few few beaches that are i would say arguably better in the Florida part of this country. Yes, so this is you know as a as an eighth grader, you would get the samples and then leave the fudge place. Yes, peanut butter fudge, vanilla fudge. Yeah, you know those non chocolate flavors I remember being a fan of, like the maple walnut perhaps. And you know what, next time I'm in the Jersey Shore, I will go and I'll buy a lot of fund to make up for it that in the saltwater taffy, right, like these are these are both critical components. My husband likes that I do not enjoy the salt water taffy, but he likes it a lot. Well, speaking of your eighth grade self, Sarah, let's revisit eighth grade. How would you describe your middle school self? Well, actually, eighth grade was a huge improvement over sixth and seventh grade. You know, I actually did a more reflection on this question than any of your others because it was just like, okay, trip down memory lane here, Oh my gosh. My two words to describe my middle school self were not cool and I had have really bad vision, and I had the most hideous like coke bottle glasses you can imagine. And right before eighth grade I was allowed to get contact, So like my life changed totally significantly better. I was, you know, in retrospect, I was really late to go through puberty, Like none in seventh grade, Like I don't even think in eighth grade, maybe not even in like really really late, and I think it every you know, I'm short to begin with, and to be short and late means you're like extra short. And just I don't know. I was playing my music. I was singing in the chorus, which was like a great highlight for me. And they had a really strong program in that, like we had a you know, special chorus where you could go and it was like before school, and it was a lot of fun. And I played the violin and I had my few close friends. But Hugh sixth and seventh grade, like I would not go back there for any matter, any particular memories of that time. He goes a quick story. Oh god, I don't know I used to This is more. I don't remember what grade this was. But I fell asleep in class a lot and then like they would bang stuff on the desk. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Well, and I was a pretty good student, but not perfect. Yeah, so yeah, all right, Well that's that's good to know. Did you at that point have any idea of things you wanted to be when you grew up? Ah? Yes, so I've gone through a few iterations. I definitely had a writer phase. I had a long psychologist slash psychiatrist phase. I think I mentioned this on another episode way buried in the Archives, But like, I watched the show Growing Pains, and I thought the dad's gig was like the best. He went into this office in his house and just like talk to people all day and they seemed to have a really great life. He supported his fans. So there I was the budding psychiatrist, and I just also thought that field was very interesting and cool. Then there was like a brief orthodonist phase. I think I clearly was like looking for a secure job. Good daid okay, And then to be honest, two of my best friends in high school were like, oh, we're gonna be pre mad, and I'm like, well, I'm as good as you, so I'm now pre mad. So yeah, and then I actually did quickly consider becoming a child psychiatrist during my medical school years. But then after my pediatrics it's called a sub internship or you kind of practice being in that genre. I was like, no, no no, no, I fit much more here. I'm not patient enough to be a psychiatrist. So there you go. What was your least favorite pre med class? Oh, no question, organic chemistry. I don't know why I even bothered asking that well. And I happen to be very good close friends with If she hears this, she'll be I don't think she lists. But anyway, my other friends listened, and she was valedictorian of our class. And she is now a senior professor of organic chemistry at Harvard and has won like nine million awards. And she would like be like Sarah, it's okay. Like she tried to teach me like I had like the best. I couldn't be any better of a tutor, and I still couldn't do it, Like I still hated it. My brain could not slip the little shapes around. It was a disaster. I really enjoyed chemistry. I liked physics. I did really well in both of them. Organic like killed me. Yeah, but it's okay. And when I took my MCAT, I I think I just gave up in that area. I just assumed, like my scores and the other things would kind of make up for it, and I think it worked out. Yes, it's an interesting idea of why, you know, especially a lot of people who are providing sort of immediate community care for various things needed to have done organic chemistry. But I don't know. Every profession has a way of weeding people out for whatever reason they intend to do that. So when did you start running in all this? Because that was relatively early on too, right, I ran. I've always done some kind of running that I can remember. My sport in high school was cheerleading. I still wasn't cool. So don't get the wrong idea. Maybe you enjoined the cheerleader squad to make yourself cool. Uh maybe No, I actually I mean it was like the one sport where I was like, oh, I'm because it was kind of a combination of dance and you didn't have to like have the hand eye coordination to deal with like balls and stuff, and I liked gymnastics and so it actually fit like what I was interested in. I don't think it was eployed. I don't think I was fooling myself. Was going to make me cool anyway. So I would run as sort of like cross training for that, just because our coach would like make us run, and then I just felt like, okay, I had to do some sort of like workout to stay in shape. And then in college I would occasionally run. It was a beautiful place to run. There's this like gorgeous three mile loops that goes kind of like behind the campus, behind this famous art museum, through the rolling forest, like just beautiful. And so I would run occasionally, maybe a couple times a week, certainly during the summer. And then med school hit and it was very stressful and I felt like I needed some kind of an outlet. And then I met my husband. Well I didn't meet him, but like I used to see him in the little gym in the parking garage of our med school, Duke Parking Garage gym. I don't know if that still is a thing, but it was. He would like talk to me while I was on the treadmill and I'm like, no, I can't breathe, I can't talk whatever. But I kind of gleaned he was a runner, and then we started dating and then you know, he still ran, and that definitely inspired me to run more. I remember at the time his sister was really into running and I kind of idolized her, so I copied that, and then it definitely took a fuel of its own. Although my first marathon I only impulsively decided on because he was training for it, and then like, I was trying to do longer and longer runs, and he's like, why don't you just like try a sixteen miler and see if you can like build up to it and in six weeks or something, And I did it and it was super fun and I really just enjoyed. The thing I've always liked about running isn't necessarily the running itself. It's like the implementation of a plan and like the and the following and seeing yourself improve and the goal setting of it. I mean, I obviously that's kind of part of my personality anyway. But you know, it's funny because I am so slow compared to how I used to be, and I really don't care. It's funny because if you had asked me, like fifteen years ago, would you care if you ran ten eleven minute miles? And I would be like, oh, now, it's like, oh, I'm going outside whatever. Now our standards change as we grow up. I'm shifting my questions around, because I want to get to that with your planning thing. What was your first planner? Well, I, you know, we had the school planners, the ones that are like standard issue. My very first planner that I played with, though, were these giant hardback books that had the year. Okay, So my dad worked at a continuing legal education firm, which digression I feel has a lot of parallels to my current job, except that I'm medical education, so it's kind of cool. So one of his things that he had to do was a lot of booking, and it was like the eighties, and so his company would give me these blue hardback books with a year on them and a page for every day, I guess to keep their employees organized or whatever, and they'd always have leftover ones, and so I would get the years, the old years, so like if it was nineteen eighty nine and it was totally nineteen eighty nine, I would get nineteen eighty eight and it was blank, and it was like, ooh, a whole year. And I don't even know if I realized it was a planner per se, because it was just like each a day on each page, and it had the company logo on like every single page and it was really ugly in retrospect, but I thought it was amazing, and so that was my first planner. I used to like draw all in them, and I would play school with them with my sister, and I was always just driven to like write a lot, Like I enjoyed writing things down, and that must be some sort of like heritable trait because I see my daughter. I mean, it could also just be the show write a lot of things down, but like I can see that she really enjoys processing things in that way. If she gets mad about something, she wants to sit down and like write three loose leaf pages of like dense texts about what happened. And I think I was like that too, So yeah, well that was my first plan. So it's funny every family has, you know, those things, Like you guys have giant piles of old year old planners sitting in the house. Are there any other things from like your family growing up that you, you know, didn't think anything of at the time, but now you realize, well, wait, not everyone does that. I don't know. Well, I mean I I one thing and this is sort of I don't know. I don't think I've realized how loud my family until I, you know, went back or introduced others to them, so I realized that yah. Yeah. And also like my my dad loves to play music and he'll play it pretty loud and pretty constantly in our used to play in our house and probably still does, but now he's the only one and my mom listening to it. So so yeah, the volume of our household probably did not phase me at the time because it was normal, and now strikes me as fairly loud. There you go. All right, let's quit, take a quick ad break, and then I'll be back with more questions for Sarah. All right, we are back. In this episode, I am interviewing Sarah about her life, hoping to come up with some stuff that even long term blog readers and listeners have not yet heard. So we've been talking about her first planners, about what her family did growing up. So what makes your perfect vacation? Like, if you're going to take a perfect vacation, what would it look like? I'm going to give two answers, because like there's the perfect non kid vacation and the perfect kid vacation, and I'm they just don't share all that media elements. So my perfect non kid vacation would be to some kind of beautiful natural setting where there's also a great degree of luxury afforded. So I mean my fortieth birthday planned trip that didn't happen because of the pandemic probably would have fit the bill really nicely. I would want there to be lots of time to just do nothing and maybe not a lot of things nearby, so it's fine to just sit around in the beautiful setting and read books and like get a massage and then go out for a sumptuous dinner. So that's that's my jam for my perfect vacation, and of course perfect beautiful weather the whole time too, lots of sun, not too hot, not too cold. Now my perfect family vacation, like with the kids, I would say, also beautiful natural setting, but with just lots and lots of local things that are easy to get to and fun. So I'm not sure like where that you know would be, So probably city destinations would make more sense because then they're you know, you can easily take public transportations, So maybe like Boston in the summer, staying at a large a large rented cottage or something airbnb. Some rich family that leaves their you know, their Piana tear behind during the summer for some reason. And yeah, exploring things, doing stuff, and then also having close family and friends in your bis. Actually Boston would be great. That would be my ideal family. It would make something to be a horrible vacation. Oh god, I don't know. Lots of things would make it horrible. I mean, I've taken a few vacations that weren't amazing. It is always very disappointing to go somewhere that you assume you were going to be spending most of your time outdoors and then the weather's horrendous or constantly storming or something like that. Vacations where you get sick are pretty horrific. You know, we had been planning a cruise, but I'm leaning towards canceling it because the idea of like wondering if we've contracted COVID on a moving boat in the middle of the ocean just doesn't sound good. So very lot of can sanitizer I mean, even you know, non COVID times the cruise ship. Though, it's far enough a way that I thinking maybe like the rapid testing will be so good by that point that like everyone's you know, spitting in a cup before they bore, they're doing daily tests. I mean, who knows. But no, I don't know what like the word. I'm pretty open to most most experiences. I like the vacations where you do nothing. I don't like the vacations where you're trying to pack in three activities per day, And in fact, I will just bristle against that and be like, no, I'm doing one thing a day, because that's how I roll. Got it, all right, So what makes you happiest when you see it on your calendar podcast? No, I'm just kidding. If I see a day that's almost blank, that makes me the happiest right now, because it's just so rare, and it means that I can spend some time reading in bed doing nothing. Even this morning, I kind of had a little bit of a Of course, it always gets filled up with stuff, doesn't it. That's kind of how things work. But I will say the bank the blank space, especially when it's blank space that's coming up soon, I mean blank space three months from now. That I've learned enough from Laura and from life that that means absolutely nothing. But if you're like, oh, Monday's coming up and literally I have nothing planned that is a really nice and wonderful feeling that can be very good. So if you had to switch careers now, I mean, we talked about what you wanted to be when you grew up, But if you, for whatever reason, found out you needed to switch careers right now, what would you aim to transition into. You know, it's funny, like I was just thinking, I I have like the best job, Like I really really like my job. I feel like I lucked into this like amazing hybrid because I have just enough patient care where it's like really fun and not overwhelming, and the GME side fits me so well, and I just yeah, So I don't know. I mean, I love you. I've talked about this. I fantasized about the idea of like writing or writing in the productivity genre or just sort of a memoir type of a thing, or even like playing with fiction, but that's you know, I don't really have experience in that. I do obviously have sperience in my blog, but very different. So yeah, I mean, my ideal thing would be to find something pretty close to what I'm doing now because I think it's a great fit. But otherwise going down one of those pasts. Yeah, well, it's not that you lucked into it. I mean, I remember, I've read the Shoebox for a long long time, and I remember the days when you were sort of overwhelmed with the sheer volume of patient care, and that you've made a conscious choice to pivot within your job, that you have to take on more of that life. But you also have to be in the right place at the right time. And I'm very much on the younger side for someone in the position that I'm in, and part of that is just especially because I'm location constrained. I would like to acknowledge and be grateful for the fact that there is some luck involved, but it is not luck that I've managed to continue to I think do a pretty good job and hope to stay in that position. That would not be luck excellent. So let's say I was you know, obviously this podcast is about combining work and family. Let's say I was one of your residents and I come to you and I say, Sarah, you know, I'm thinking about starting a family in the next year or two. What would you tell me. Well, I've had sort of those conversations with residents and I say, yay, that's so exciting. You should totally do it. We'll make it work. Everyone can make it work in different ways. Don't rush yourself into thinking about the logistics, but make sure you put some deliberate thought into the logistics. But I mean to me, it would be such a no. There might be hesitation on their end, but it would be met with total like embrace of the idea that they feel ready to do this and that there are pathways in place to be able to help make it successful, whether they have a working partner or not. Particularly because you're saying it's one of my residents, so I know that, like, at the end of the day, resources are not going to be a terrible problem. They may not have a lot of funds to cover tons and tons of extra help during residence, but at least where we are there is some subsidized daycare that is available, and I know that if you know from experience being a fellow and having a kid done thoughtfully, you can cover that. And then you know that there's a big nice light at the end of the tunnel that will make things more doable. So I would encourage them not to wait. If they feel ready, then we will work around that, and that I am excited for that part of their journey, and I'd want to make sure that I conveyed as much support as possible, because I think the last thing anybody needs is their supervisor kind of hesitating when they're presenting their life's goals and desires. Yes, exactly, so an enthusiastic yay rah. On the parenting front, is there anything you said you would never do with your kids that occasionally happens in the household? There's probably a lot. Genevieve definitely, Like I was very strict with screen time with Annabelle and completely not at all with Genevieve because it just became reality that it made sense and it was kind of like I had enough experience to know what was going to make or break things in life. So that's one I think. I always thought my kids would have like a very strict bedtime because I heard about couples that would be really proud of how like, you know, their kids went to bed and they had nice couples time or whatever. But that has not really been my experience. I mean, half the time, I'm going to bed like two seconds after they are, but it wasn't like I was going to have nice couples time even if they were up earlier. And fun fact, for most people, when your kids go to bed really early, they're probably going to wake up earlier too. I know that some people are going to argue with this, but like, really, that's why time changes kind of work. Like that's why I'm not on like there's no magic here. For a couple of nights. You may notice, like in a baby that you know, waiting till late to put them to bed causes a fitful night of sleep. I get that, But for the most part, especially once you get past that baby phase, if you put them to bed at seven, they're not going to naturally sleep till seven. It's like silly. So anyway, putting them to bed a lot later than I maybe thought or sort of idealized the vision of a good mother puts her children to bed early, and I don't think there's much value to that. Yeah, those are my main ones. I will say. I continue to hate the influx of plastic toys into my house and I still try to limit it, not because I think the plastic toys are like gonna hurt the kids, but more just I can't stand the waste and the environmental impact and the clutter. So I remain I'm not strict about it. I let it happen, but I still like feel as much vitriol as I did in the beginning about the pile of plastic toys. Some things never change. If you don't want pastic garbage in your life as a regular grown up, and then you have kids and you don't want little plastic toy pieces everywhere as well. So in terms of our causes, we are against plastic toys. Let's say a more hopeful cause here, I am putting you in charge of distributing a one million dollar charitable gift, or you can make whatever number you want. Where does it get? So I thought about this and then I was like, Okay, I want this gift to go someplace that I kind of understand, like that I could help distribute it properly. And I think that you know, one million isn't an infinite sum, but it could probably make a really big difference in certain scenarios. So I would use it to cover diabetes care costs in developing countries, because there's this like insane gap between how children with diabetes are cared for in the US, and then like these islands. You know, I'm in Florida, so we kind of get exposure to some of the island nations like Haiti and even like Jamaica, and like they they don't have it's the same disease and they're humans, and yet they don't have access to even like a third of what you know, the Americans get, And like, don't even get me started on how expensive it is here because it's like that's still problematic, but in other countries they could never even dream of having like an insulin pump or the modern kinds of insulince we use now, the things that can help kids with a disorder that they did nothing to cause, and it strikes pretty randomly to not like suffer and just be sick and anyway, so that's what I would do. I would be in charge of like an International Diabetes Care Fund to provide modern diabetes care to kids who needed in countries where they can't get it. Awesome. I recognize there's like nine million other things I could have picked. So this was not to like discount any other valid cause within our nation's borders or anywhere, but this is kind of what came to mind, is something that strikes me as salient in my current stage of life and career. Yeah, well you see something in your life that is a definite need and that's a pretty big one. So there you go. So just one more question for you. Do you have any topics that you keep gravitating toward, like in your reading, like when you're out, you know, seeing something that you that's maybe not your normal life, but just like a topic that always strikes you as interesting artificial intelligence. But I'm probably not the only one. I mean, what is it about artificial intelligence that you're like, Oh, I got to read that article, just the idea, Like where are we headed with that? I feel like it's such a mystery and the pace of technology has been so rapid and accelerating that like we could actually be in a place within my lifetime where we have artificial intelligence that's like beyond human capability or maybe not, or like are there things that humans can do and we'll be able to do always that AI will not be able to effectively replicate. I mean I think about it all the time. With respect to my career, we're going back to like the medicine side of things, like couldn't a shoe robot like kind of do pretty much like what I do, like is a lot of it's kind of algorithmic and picking up on patterns, And isn't that what computers do? Right? So, like, will that happen within my lifetime? Would it work? Am I going to have to drive my own car in like twenty thirty? I don't know. I'm fascinated, Laura says no, she shook her head. Well, but I mean so I think you know this is not the episode about me here, But I'm just sort of thinking that, like you come up with what you can do versus what the robot can do. Now, the robot could take the inputs and say this is what you know you should do as the appropriate care for this person, but you the robot probably isn't going to give that good Like you know, here's why it's important you need to follow this protocol. And I understand that this is challenging for your family and all that. The conversation that you would be then having with the paper, I think it depends on how good the AI is. Right, So if you have and it might not look like a person, but it could be a voice speaking with a very human tone. I mean, I don't know you're right right now, we certainly don't have that. Nobody wants to hear in a robot voice. You have type one diabetes. The treatment options are but like you know, if that's twenty twenty or maybe even like twenty ten, or probably could do better than that right now if I had access to it. But like twenty forty, I'm going to be sixty years old and I could still be practicing. And like you know, again, I see those asymptotic graphs that show like how much progress we've made in the last twenty years. Maybe we will have a shoe robot, which is fine because I will have amassed plenty by then and I can just quietly step away. Well what will you be doing? Do do you think you'll retire around sixty or what's your goal? I can program the robots, and I'm just kidding. I don't know. I mean, this is a question I asked. I don't right now, I do not. The only thing that I'm like determined that I'm going to make sure that is covered and not by me is overnight call. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy doing some iteration of what I'm doing I hope to get better and better at it and more involved in different projects and research and leadership and all that kind of stuff. But I think I could be happy doing it for for quite a long time. And you know, it's funny. It's like if I'm pretty happy doing it now and I have three kids at home and it's still okay, like it'll be. I think about, like what that would be like if I if my kids were I mean, and I know you never stop becoming a parent, but if they are in college and engaged in their stuff or in the workforce, and all I have to focus on is my job. Even if I don't have the stamina I have at forty, you'd think at sixty that it still would feel pretty doable and exciting. And I think I would still want to go into work every day. So I would like to be financially independent by that point, so that I don't need anything from anyone. If I'm asked to do something that sounds terrible, I have the option to just be like nope, But I don't see myself just like leaving. I also think it'd be fun to do like a tangential kind of wise person job at that point. And what I mean is like, I've noticed that people who work for the ACGMMY, which is like the regulatory board of all the residencies, tend to be like prior program directors in their sixties, you know, empty nests, flying around telling people what's wrong with their programs. I feel like that would be kind of fun. That would be a good it would make sense, Yeah, a good good next act. All right, Well, that's that's what we've got from Shoe. So we're looking forward to the Shoe robot. We're picturing her with her bottleneck glasses and then joining the cheerleading squad and all the other great things we've learned in this episode. So thanks Sarah for sharing all that with us. Thank you so much. It was fun to be interviewed by my podcast co host, and I can't wait to return the favor. All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds, and we'll be back next week with more on making work and life together. Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram, and you can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join us next time for more on making work and life work together.