EpISODE 1: JONATHAN JAPA

aUGUST 2, 2023

Interview by pRIYANKA gERA

Edited by Priyanka Gera and Ivan Dominguez

Photo by Ivan Dominguez

First question, where did you grow up?

So I grew up in Brooklyn, New York––born and raised specifically in Sunset Park. I've been in Brooklyn for 27 years.

Brooklyn bred! So if someone was going to visit Brooklyn, what is one thing they should know, or one thing they should do?

That’s a good question because I have to think about it. If you want to see something nice, go to DUMBO because that is where everyone goes. Have you been to DUMBO?

No, what’s DUMBO?

DUMBO is an acronym that stands for “down under the Manhattan Bridge.” Sorry, Brooklyn bridge. I’m a bad brooklynite. Hold on. “Down under the Manhattan Bridge.” Or Brooklyn Bridge. One of the two…It’s really nice over there. It's by the water and you can see Manhattan from there. It’s a very touristy area. That’s definitely one place to go. Williamsburg is also good. They have a lot of good food and things like that.

Alright. Do you have any pets?

Yes. I have one. Her name is Luna. She’s originally from Ecuador. Born and raised in Ecuador. I got her when she was three months and then I brought her over to the U.S. And she only speaks Spanish because that’s all we speak to her here at home. So if you say “Hello” to her, she’s not going to look at you, but if you say “Hola,” she’ll look at you.

Aww cute. Have you thought about raising her bilingual though? Maybe teaching her some English words?

She’s…a little too old to learn a whole new language.

What do you think is the key to a long lasting friendship?

I want to give two different answers. So I’m going to ignore your question. It's going to be communication and patience. Communication because you have to have…some frequent communication between each other, whether just to check up on each other. And I say patience as the second part because, especially now in medical school, we’re not kids anymore and everyone is busy and they have things to do. Just be patient with the other person.

Just like we are doing now Japa!

Exactly. There we go.

What is the last vacation you took?

Does staying in bed after surgery count? Or does it have to be somewhere else?

Well, it depends on how you define vacation.

Vacation. Anything that is not school related. So that counts.

Three or four years ago I went to Ecuador for, I believe it was a month and a half. I went to stay where my family was. But the problem is…I think I overstayed because it is not so much city over where my family is. It's a little bit more in the mountains. Feeding the chickens is fun for only so long. So I have to bear that in mind whenever I go…I'm a very homebody type of person, so I like being here in New York City.

Alright, my next favorite question, of all of them. How do you take your coffee?

Black. And I take it black for a few reasons. The main reason that I take it black is because I drink coffee purely for the caffeine and nothing else. I don’t care for sugar and I also can't taste very well, so it doesn't matter to me. And it's cheaper too.

What's the most spontaneous thing you’ve ever done?

Several, Let’s see…For context I went to City College of New York in Harlem. Brooklyn all the way to Manhattan, it takes about an hour on the express train. One day, I woke up––I’m usually a morning person––I woke up at 4 something that day. It was spring and I was already done with classes. I had to go to school that day to meet up with a friend. I said “I wonder how long it takes to walk there?” So I pulled it up on Google Maps. It said 5 hours. And I was like “Alright, I’ll go.” And I did. So I left my house at 5:00 and I got to CCNY at like 10 in the morning.

Oh my gosh. You got a year’s worth of steps from that.

Oh I should have reported it. Actually, my phone did. I didn’t have an apple watch. I don’t even know if those existed yet, but, not to sound old, I think my phone recorded the steps. Yeah, I got in a lot of steps that day…very few people believe I did that because it sounds absurd. But I did do it.

I believe you Japa 😉. Next question, which emoji best describes you?

Let me look through my keyboard right now. Let’s see. Let me look at my most frequently used. I would say, I think it’s called the smirk 😏. It's so ambiguous.

That's my most used one also.

Because it can mean literally anything. You can be sarcastic with it. You can be genuine with it. Multiuse. I like it for that reason.

Your favorite season?

Fall. Even though everyone in my family is in agriculture and they are farmers, I hate being outside. When it's hot outside, I hate it. I want to go home immediately. I am better with the cold weather, But fall is my favorite because it's sweater weather.

Who are you closest to in your life?

I would say, probably my best friend that I met in middle school when we were 12. I met him because I asked him if he wanted to play videogames after school and that’s how we met. And we still talk to each other, 15 years later.

What was the videogame? That’s the real question.

Halo 3. On the Xbox 360 from way back when.

What was your first job Japa?

…answer the phone at a pizza shop…I remember one time I delivered to a house that was around the corner. I didn’t expect a tip or anything. I was about to leave but the person said “Wait, I have something for you.” It was the longest five minutes of my life and she drops a quarter in my hand. Not that I’m ungrateful, but I guess she went to go look for it between her couch cushions or something. That was probably my lowest earned rate ever: $0.25 per 5 minutes.

Wow. Have you framed that quarter? Because it deserves to be.

I probably lost it. I thought it was really funny, and who knows from then.

What are you feeling grateful for today?

I'm grateful that my surgery got approved in the last five minutes because it almost wasn’t approved. And I would have been really upset because then it would have gotten pushed back and then it would have affected going to school. So I am very grateful that I got the surgery approved and that I got it done today…It was a labral tear. They did a resection so they shaved down the bone . The problem with my femur was that it was a little bit too spiky. Instead of a smooth head, it was spiky so they had to shave it down to make it smooth and then they also fixed the labral with sutures.

What did you do during your gap years?

I graduated from CCNY in 2018. I knew I didn’t have that much clinical experience to put on my resumé, so for 1 year I worked in EMS, literally after finishing CCNY. I got to see a lot of cool stuff. I got to travel through most of the major hospitals in New York City, so NYU, Mount Sinai… Second year, I said. “Okay, let me stop EMS because I already did a year of it. Let me do something different in the medical field.” I worked at an ophthalmology office and I started working at the ophthalmology office in September and then literally 6 months later the pandemic lockdown happened. Fortunately, because I was there exactly 6 months, I was able to get unemployment pay…Because of the lockdown and the pandemic, I studied straight for the MCAT. I took that in September of 2020.

So right after that I started applying for schools/started working at a different ophthalmology office where I got to see even more stuff. And then I basically stayed at the second ophthalmology job until I got accepted and started going to school at NYMC.

So would you say ophthalmology is something you are interested in?

No, because I did it for two years. But don’t tell the ophthalmologist or the aspiring ophthalmologist. If I was to do ophthalmology, I would do retina because it seems like the hardest one and the most interesting one. I am more interested in surgery and specifically orthopedic surgery, especially since, you know, I just got my hips done.

Personal experience is a true motivator.

Exactly. So whenever I tell a patient that the surgery is not bad, they can actually believe me because I literally did it.

What song would you sing at karaoke night?

I know the Phineas and Ferb “Aglet” song word-for-word but I don’t know if I would sing that one.

Staying on a less serious note, if flowers could talk, what do you think they would sound like?

I literally had this question as a botany project in college…I feel like they would have a very flute-like voice, like a high pitched voice because plants are like––I forgot my botany. I hope my botany professor doesn’t see this. But they have the shape of tubes so that makes me think they would have a flute-ish quality to the sound they were to make if they could talk.

Very practical answer. I like that.

In terms of what they would say, probably “Don’t harvest us.” That would probably be it.

I think the last question is going to be, any advice for incoming M1s?

I would tell them that the imposter syndrome is a very real thing. It may strike at some point, but you are here for a reason. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t supposed to be. And when you first start out, don’t be so hard on yourself. Make goals, but make soft goals and have fun. You’re supposed to have fun, especially during anatomy lab. It’s the most hands-on fun we have before clinicals. Learn as much as you can. Leave yourself some time to do other things. Have fun and enjoy. It’s a memorable experience that very few people get to have.

Contact Jonathan at jjapa@student.touro.edu

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