Students glimpse medical futures
For one veteran, the road to becoming a surgeon included a stop in Iraq
University of Florida medical students Geneva Massiello, center, and Lindsey Koss, right, pick up their envelopes unveiling where they will go for specialized training as fellow classmate Pui Lee, left, comes to receive his envelope during Match Day at the Reitz Union on Thursday, March 18, 2010.
Aaron E. Daye/ Staff photographerPublished: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, March 19, 2010 at 1:10 a.m.
For John Roland Taylor III, the road to becoming a trauma surgeon led him from Eastside High School to Johns Hopkins, then on to Fort Benning, Ga., Kirkuk in northern Iraq, and back to Gainesville to enroll in the University of Florida College of Medicine.
On Thursday, the 31-year-old Army veteran got his latest marching orders, along with 125 other members of the medical school's senior class. Taylor will be heading to the University of Kentucky to begin his specialized training in general surgery.
He is one of more than 16,000 U.S. medical school seniors who learned at noon Thursday in Match Day ceremonies across the country where they will spend the next three to seven years of residency training.
Taylor, who goes by J.R., graduated from Eastside's International Baccalaureate program in 1997. He is the son of J.R. Taylor Jr., a retired Army lieutenant colonel, and Marli Taylor.
Taylor notes there are seven members of his med school class who grew up and graduated from high school in Gainesville.
His interest in medicine dates back to his high school days, when he worked as a nurse's assistant at North Florida Regional Medical Center.
"I swept, mopped and could watch whatever surgery I wanted to," Taylor said. "And I'd always loved science."
His other love was baseball, and he attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on an Army ROTC scholarship, playing baseball while he was there.
In February 2002, Taylor was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. He received basic training at Fort Benning, followed by Ranger school and Airborne school.
As a light infantry platoon leader, he was stationed in Hawaii with the 25th Infantry Division, but his days in the land of aloha were numbered. His platoon was deployed to Iraq in January 2004 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
"Hawaii to Iraq, just halfway around the world," Taylor said. Both had palm trees and sand, but sea and surfing were replaced by water shortages and IEDs. (That's an improvised explosive device, or roadside bomb, for civilians.)
Taylor and his platoon served 13 months near Kirkuk, an Iraqi hot spot with lots of oil and even more civil unrest.
When he returned to the United States, he decided on a future in trauma surgery and enrolled in UF's College of Medicine.
"I saw some stuff in Iraq, and I had a pretty good idea of what I'd be getting into as a trauma surgeon," Taylor said. "I'd like to think that I've had enough life experiences that in a tough situation, I'd be able to keep a cool head and work through any problem thrown at me."
Taylor credits the members of his platoon with teaching him nearly as much as his medical school instructors.
"Whatever success I have in life will come from having known those guys, being able to lead them, the things they taught me and experiences we shared," he said.
Taylor, who serves as president of his med school class, put down his top choices for surgical training after a round of interviews and submitted them to the National Residency Match Program. Schools also submit a list of candidates they'd like to see fill their open residency slots.
The rest is out of the students' hands. The match program uses a computerized mathematical algorithm to align applicants' preferences with the preferences of residency programs in order to fill thousands of training positions in U.S. teaching hospitals.
When Taylor and his classmates opened their envelopes at Match Day ceremonies in the Reitz Union, they discovered where they'd be spending a chunk of their future.
Taylor listed six schools and placed at Kentucky. He's looking at five years of training in surgery, then another one- or two-year fellowship in trauma surgery.
"I'll be close to qualifying for AARP before I can practice!" Taylor lamented.
He'll be joined by his wife, Kristin, and 18-month-old son named — what else? — J.R. Taylor IV.
Taylor received his discharge papers from the Army a few days ago. He joins two other veterans in the class — Marine Andrew Murphy and Tom Chamberlin, a Navy helicopter pilot. Two other classmates, John Magulick (Air Force) and Klaus Freeland (Army), will be sworn in as military officers at graduation. All five earned a standing ovation from classmates and their families at the Match Day event.
His future now lies in medicine, and his decisions must take his family into account, but Taylor added, "If I had to go back to Iraq as a platoon leader with the exact same platoon, I would do it."
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