The school’s Pre-Medical Club hosted guest speaker cardiologist Peter Tran on Dec. 1. He spoke to the club’s 30 members about the truth of the medical field. “He gave a talk about how he became a doctor and what to expect in medical school,” club sponsor and Physics teacher Bryan Cooley said. “He was trying to give them a realistic view of how to become a doctor.” Tran has been a cardiologist for several years now at Kaiser Permanente after attending medical school in Walnut Creek.

According to club president senior Ruby Kuang, the club hosts a guest speaker every month. “Students can have a conversation with the doctors and ask them real questions, not just questions from text books,” she said. “They talk about their own experience in the medical field and about their internships.”

Many of the guest speakers are contacted through relatives or friends, such as Tran who was a friend of an old acquaintance of Cooley’s. “We try to always have a doctor from a different field come in,” Kuang said.

Junior Win-Mon Kyi is organizing a program in which a few club members will be allowed to shadow a doctor in Hayward. The connection was made through a family member of Kyi’s, a former nurse. “Students are going to be able to sign up for at our next meeting,” Kyi said. “We’re planning on shadowing sometime in the next few months.”

Though the club aims to invite real doctors to each meeting, when they don’t have speakers they often play games involving medical terms in order to familiarize members with the field. “They played a game where they gave students a disease, and they had to act out the disease while everyone else had to guess,” Cooley said.

The club is also currently holding a fundraiser called “Every Penny Counts” to raise money for AIDS patients. In the future they plan to participate in a similar fundraiser titled “Pennies For Patients,” which raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.

Fundraising is a large part of the club, according to Kuang. “We aim to develop students’ medical interest and raise money for research too,” she said.

The Pre-Medical Club meets every second and fourth Tuesday of the month in Room S203 at 2:30 p.m.