Learner Profile
Foster Oppong Baah
HMX Courses
“I grew up thinking science was a difficult thing,” says Foster Oppong Baah. “I never dreamt of medicine.” But his interactions with students at one of Ghana’s top medical schools, near his home in Accra, helped to convince Baah that a career in the field was attainable. After completing a three-year nursing program, he took HMX courses as a first step toward his goal of becoming a medical student. It wasn’t easy – due to unreliable internet access, he completed many lessons during long sessions at internet cafes around Accra – but Baah took the challenges in stride. “I was so aggressive in my willingness to learn, that I didn’t see it as difficult at all,” he says.
What are your career goals, and where do HMX courses fit?
I was supposed to end up becoming a nurse…but I had to ask myself this question: Do I really want to end up as a nurse, or what do I want to do for life? And the answer for that was that I’m not really desiring to stay as a nurse, so why don’t I start refocusing on what I would like to do? So I started thinking about medicine.
One day, I came across HMX and thought it could be the best path for my career. It didn’t matter my age, it didn’t matter what my circumstances were, what mattered to me most was Harvard giving me the opportunity to study.
Had you previously studied the topics covered in the courses?
I had studied anatomy and physiology. And then also I did some microbiology. I did have some knowledge about immunology, but it certainly wasn’t detailed like the immunology I studied with HMX.
What aspects of HMX courses did you find most helpful for your learning?
I liked everything. The reason is simple: I’ve never been exposed to something like this, a medical program online. Here in Ghana, in my schooling, I’ve been used to having the teacher in front of you, in front of the blackboard. I’ve never taken an online course like this before, where I have very clear videos being offered to me by the real professors who are teaching at Harvard.
The portions where the lecturer or professor would interview the doctor were excellent for me, and also the patient-doctor interactions were excellent, because they helped me to have the perspective of the patient to their disease. That helped me to learn the concepts that I needed to – it was very interesting.
Do you feel like the courses have prepared you for medical school?
Certainly – I feel I have the impetus to run through med school, the confidence even much more now, and I think if I were to start med school today, I wouldn’t feel vulnerable at all.
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