HBCUs

So I've been slacking this week. I'm not sure why b/c I acutally have been working 8-5 or 9-5 this week. I know a regular people's schedule. Plus I have an entire weekend off. I know 2 in a row!!!!! I'm probably gonna pay for this big time later in the year. Anyway. That was not the purpose of this post as i'm sure youcan tell from the title.

So I went to FAMU for undergrad and pharmacy school which as most of you know is a HBCU (historically black college or university) Prior to my junior of high school I really didn't know much about HBCU's which is kinda funny b/c both my parents and most of my family in their age group graduated from Howard. I'm not sure growing up that I knew Howard was a black college. I knew a lot of foreigners went there. My parents didn't emphasize that it was an hbcu and when the college time came around it wasn't like I needed to go to an hbcu. In fact I really didn't know how many there were etc. So I went to FAMU and kinda didn't know what to expect of the whole experience. I loved it!!!!! As most of you also know. My car is much more FAMU than USF predominant. I also have a friend who claims that everytime I mention FAMU it is also followed by you know we have the 2nd best pharmacy school in the country and number 1 in the southeast. So yeah I'm proud of where I earned my degrees from. But I don't know how much I attributed to the HBCU experience. In otherwords would I have been as successful and had as great an experience with life long friends etc if I'd gone to UF or FSU or Boston University (where I spent most of my senior year convinced I wanted to go) I think the answer is probably yes. I would have been different but it probably would have been good. However this past week I realized that I think the HBCU experience gave me something else I maybe didn't count on. Confidence and poise. My residency program has an exceptional amount of blacks for any grouping of doctors. Blacks only make up 2.3% of all physicians. This number has remained steady sinced the mid - 60s and has not improved while the percentages of physicians from all other minority groups have. Also blacks are the most underrepresented minority group in all of medicine. (My theories on why this is will be saved for another post another day) We have an extremely diverse program even for the area of pediatrics which is one of the more diverse of specialties of medicine. And I don't just mean blacks we are also have a lot of hispanics and asians as well. 13/44 of the individuals in my program are black. What is even more interesting though is that all of us went to HBCUs for our undergrad. Coincidence? I think not. So while I'm extremely excited that blacks have the opportunity to go to any college that they want to from state university, community/ vo-tech, ivy league, private, religious affiliate wahtever...I don't think the importance of HBCUs should be forgotten and they are worth fighting to keep open and supported. I also think that people like me have an obligation to share our experience and success stories with the best and the brightest so that they know they can attain the heights they want with their foundation from a HBCU.