5 Medical School and the Peace Corps

After Mae completed her bachelor of science degree at Stanford University, she decided to go to medical school to become a doctor. From 1977 to 1981, Mae attended Cornell University Medical College in New York. In medical school she learned how to take care of people when they were sick and help them stay healthy.³

During college she went to Cuba, Thailand, and East Africa. In Cuba, she did research. In Thailand, she helped in a Cambodian refugee camp giving medical care. She volunteered to give medical care to people who lived in villages and refugee camps. She also worked as a Medical Officer with the Flying Doctors of East Africa program. She taught people about health and medicine. She made sure the people knew how to take care of themselves and their community members.⁵

After she graduated from Cornell, she moved to Los Angeles and opened her own doctor’s office and worked as a general practitioner (family doctor). Although she loved helping patients, she was not ready to settle down and live in L.A. permanently. She still wanted to see the world.³

So, six months later she joined the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps is a program started by the US government to help countries around the world with education, healthcare, business, women’s empowerment, and building community. Volunteers spend about  two and a half years in the Peace Corps program (27 months). Volunteers get a little bit of money to help with their living expenses (food, housing, and transportation). When they finish the program, they also get a small amount of money to help them move back to their home city.⁷

In the Peace Corps, Mae was a medical officer in West Africa. She served in the Peace Corps from 1983 to 1985. She was responsible for the health of the other Peace Corps volunteers. She supervised the pharmacy, laboratory, other doctors and staff,  and provided medical care to the communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone.⁵  Even though she was a supervisor, doctors and patients often did not take her seriously because she was so young. It was difficult to be so young and a woman in her position. She worked hard for the respect of the other doctors and the patients. She enjoyed her work volunteering very much, but when her program at the Peace Corps ended, she needed to decide what she wanted to do next.³