Anavi is a rising 10th grader exploring biomedical engineering as a direction. She's a serious ballet dancer with genuine interest in sports medicine and kinesiology.
She'll be with you for 3 weeks (Jul 5–25). This brief outlines how to structure her time so she gets the most out of it.
She needs a task — something that gives her a reason to pay attention each day and something to produce by the end. Passive observation alone won't hold her attention for three weeks.
These can run in parallel throughout the 3 weeks:
1. Patient case tracking She picks 3-4 patients (with consent) at different stages — pre-surgery, post-surgery, in rehab — and follows their journey. For each patient, she documents: what was the injury, what did the imaging show, what was the treatment plan, what does recovery look like. This gives her specific cases to focus on rather than a blur of observations.
2. Procedures through an engineering lens For each surgery or procedure she observes, she documents the mechanical problem and the engineering solution. An ACL reconstruction is a materials and anchoring problem. A joint replacement is a design problem. A fracture fixation is a structural engineering problem. She starts seeing medicine through an engineering lens — which is what biomedical engineering actually is.
3. "What's missing?" Sometime in week 1, tell her: "Watch how we work and find one thing that's frustrating, slow, or could be better." By week 2-3, she should have a problem statement and a rough concept for something that would help — a tool, a device, a process change. This connects to her design skills and gives her a project to develop after she returns home.
- Before she observes something, briefly explain what she's about to see and what to watch for
- After, let her ask questions
- Point her toward specific patients she can follow across multiple visits
- In week 2, ask her what she's noticed that could be better — and take her answer seriously
- At the end, review her report and give honest feedback on what she understood and what she missed
You don't need to teach her. Just narrate enough context that she can learn by watching, and hold her accountable for what she writes.
A structured observation journal — not a daily diary, but one entry per notable case or procedure. Each entry covers:
- What she observed (described with clinical and anatomical precision)
- What she understood about the biomechanical reasoning behind treatment decisions
- Questions or gaps she noticed
Roughly 10-15 entries over the 3 weeks, each about a page.
Plus a short synthesis (2-3 pages) at the end:
- What did she learn?
- What surprised her?
- What problem did she identify that she'd want to work on?
This report becomes the foundation for a design/engineering project she'll work on for the rest of summer.