Hometown: Durham, NC

Name of Undergraduate Institution: Duke University

Major(s)/Minor(s) in College: Chemistry (Biochemistry)

Name of Medical School: UNC School of Medicine

Favorite Quote: “You can be a dreamer, but don’t live in your bed.” – Sho Baraka

Contact Info: Omofoye@med.unc.edu

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Where are you currently at in your career path and why did you decide to pursue this career path?

I’m currently a third-year medical student at UNC.

If you could go back and have a chat with your naïve college freshman self, what would you tell him?

• Med School is hard, I’m glad you decided to take time off before starting, and I wish you woulda taken Microbiology in undergrad!!

• If I could go back TO before college, I would tell myself to develop a passion for reading books, and read more books, and read faster; it helps in the long run.

What advice would you give to someone looking to pursue a similar path as yours?

Find someone currently going through whatever career path you see for yourself, and tell them to be your mentor. Ask them questions, like the ones on this website…what should you be doing now, what do they wish they would have done differently, etc.

For Med School, really make sure it’s what you want to do; take the MCAT when you’ve covered the appropriate content and really had adequate time to prepare like over a summer or you’ve at least taken practice tests and are comfortable with your scores on those practice tests. It’s not ideal to be working and studying for MCAT but do whatchu gotta do. Take a prep course if you need it, but you can probably get what they offer if you’re disciplined and have access to multiple full-length practice tests. No shame in a post-bac, don’t rush through pre-med courses in undergrad if it’s not working. If you do a post-bac or a graduate degree, it’s advantageous to find something that’ll expose you to medical school courses as well…i.e. Physiology, Pathology, Microbiology (those big 3), and others like Anatomy, Genetics, Biochem, etc etc.

What is a major challenge you have had to overcome and how did you do so?

As someone who thinks conceptually, a challenge I’ve had to overcome was learning how to memorize details enough to perform well on tests to my satisfaction, ‘cause you can understand things and still have your grades stare back @ ya like bruuuh?!

What is your favorite thing about your medical school?

• About UNC SOM – the people, classmates, & faculty.

• About med school itself – The body is sooo coool! Diseases in their own way, also cool…Subject matter and content was more than what I expected so👍

Did you take some time off before medical school? If so, what did you do during that time?

• Applied to the MED program at UNC my senior year, and went through the program the summer after graduating undergrad.

• Afterwards worked for two years as a lab scientist in a CRO Bioanalytical lab.

Do you have any passions outside of school? If so, what are they?

I love to eat good & sleep…a lot. Passionate about education and mentoring in general, leadership development, International & Global Health. Multimedia thingz (Filming, Editing, Production)

Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions Fola, you are much appreciated! I’m positive that the advice that you’ve shared with us will be used by many people who end up reading this feature!

Health Career Spotlights Home Page

Posted on February 6th, 2017