Interview Questions

• Please provide a brief description of your current primary job function.
• Briefly tell us about your career path?
• What were some of your activities at Duke?
• How has Duke influenced your success?
• What is the best career advice you would give students interested in your career field?
• What do you do in your free time?
• Where have you traveled in the past 5 years?

Please provide a brief description of your current primary job function:
I am a Radiation Oncologist--a cancer specialist who treats malignancies with radiation, but as part of a team approach with surgeons and medical oncologists. It is a surprisingly upbeat field, and actually a lot of fun.
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Briefly tell us about your career path?
Serendipity. Took a job in the Blood Chemistry lab at Children's Hospital in Boston (even though I went into a panic whenever I took science courses), found I enjoyed it, and started taking some rudimentary science courses at night. Found to my amazement that I enjoyed them, then took Organic Chem with a great teacher and LOVED it, and took all the other pre-med courses in one year. Got into Med School on the first try--planned to bea pediatrician but found I didn't have the patience to deal with screaming kids at 2am (not realizing I would eventually have to deal with the same thing as a father!).

Started off in Internal Medicine after Med School, but my very first week I had a young patient with Hodgkin's Disease, and I got to meet one of the Radiation Oncologists, whom I really liked. About half-way thru that first year, that same doctor (Jay Harris) approached me and said that his residency program had an unexpected opening for the coming July, and asked if I'd like to join. So, without any experience or even actively applying, I got into the Harvard Residency in Radiation Oncology (at the time, the best program in the country). Never had any plans to leave New England, but in 1991 I got a call from Sinai Hospital of Baltimore asking if I'd be interested in running the Radiation Oncology program, and since I wasn't very happy in my job at the time, and serendipity had always served me well so far, I took the job--and 14 years later I'm still here and VERY happy.
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What were some of your activities at Duke?
Marching and Pep bands (somebody signed me up as a joke as a cymbals player, but I got a front row seat for every basketball game!). Hoof 'n' Horn (I can tell you how the "Fred" playhouse got its name). Duke archaeological dig in Israel under Eric Myers in the summer of '71.
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How has Duke influenced your success?
It's difficult to articulate, but Duke is truly a microcosm of all of life. I really took away a love for the academic atmosphere--music, architecture, art, liberal arts, reading literature, discussing politics, religion, etc--and coming to appreciate the fact that diversity in perception and opinion is not only the norm, but it makes life more interesting.
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What is the best career advice you would give students interested in your career field?
Find yourself some role models and mentors, and latch onto them tight!. It can sometimes get awfully monotonous when you are trying to remember the Krebs Cycle or figure out a ridiculous Physics program (especially if you could instead be out partying), and it really helps to have somebody as a frame of reference, or to give you the occasional pep talk.
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What do you do in your free time?
Love to read--both fiction and history. Love listening to jazz & classical music, going to baseball games. I've got a son in college back in my hometown of Boston, so my wife and I get up there fairly often.
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Where have you traveled in the past 5 years?
Well, since I give some talks on Radiation Oncology and I am chairman of a national program which surveys other Radiation Oncology programs, I get to travel quite a bit throughout the U.S.--got sent to Hawaii once, Florida and New York multiple times, also San Antonio, Denver, San Francisco, New Orleans, Tupelo, Nashville, etc, etc. Also did a survey at the request of the Bahamian government (a LOT of fun), and took trips to Jamaica and Grand Cayman, and to the Canadian Rockies with my family. Most summers we go to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Hope to go to Europe one of these days.
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