Gianni will enter Brown Alpert Medical School in the Fall of 2015.Gianni writes that he began the ISF major at Berkeley without a clear sense of direction but eventually decided to concentrate his studies around the question What makes people heal?. He took courses in cognitive science, psychology, social theory, and anthropology. Gianni writes: In my junior year, I stumbled on the placebo effect and devoted my thesis research to exploring and expanding an evolutionary explanation for why and how people heal when there is no active intervention administered. A few weeks after graduation in the Spring of 2014 I moved to Pennsylvania, where I am now studying a pre-med science curriculum at the Bryn Mawr post-baccalaureate program. Of the 80 or so students in the program, many have backgrounds in the ‘broad humanities’–my impression is that they did the equivalent of the ISF major at their respective university. This is to say: there is a place for us out there, in the real world. I always appreciated the academic freedom I was allowed at Berkeley and am now coming to appreciate the thesis requirement as driving me to narrow my focusit became a portal to the world of medicine and spurred my continued interest in the field. My aim is to become a doctor and further explore what it means to heal.
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