“Being bilingual helps in any profession,” she says.

Pena adds that the heavy writing demands of social science and humanities courses give students strong communication skills that will be useful when writing grant proposals or journal articles.

And students and professors alike say that the critical thinking and analytical skills fostered in the humanities and social sciences departments go a long way in the hospital.

“One thing historians are really good at is working with uncertainty. We never have information,” says Brett Flehinger, a lecturer in history and resident dean of Lowell House. “You become comfortable with what you don’t know. Doctors work that way a lot of the time.”

THE SOCIAL DIMENSION

Anisha R. Kumar ’12, an anthropology concentrator, has conducted numerous interviews for her thesis, which concerns medical anthropology. She says the notion of “medicine as a social profession” is an important one—and does not necessarily reveal itself through science classes alone.

She adds that her thesis has allowed her to explore “the lived experience of an individual [through] personal contact.”

Ja-Yoon “Uni” Choe ’12, another humanities-studying pre-med, conducts research with the Boston University School of Social Work aimed at improving health service to Asian American women in the Greater Boston Area.

The Women, Gender and Sexuality concentrator took classes at the Harvard School of Public Health last semester and says she found that the intersection of gender and health was rife for exploration, especially in the Asian American community.

The social implications of medicine also appealed to Hillary L. Ditmars ’12, who says that this interest convinced her to begin pre-medical studies in her junior year. Ditmars, a Social Studies concentrator, interned at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland last summer and realized that she wanted to work directly with patients rather than craft health policy.

“It’s really, really important work, but it also made me realize thinking and writing about health in an abstract way wasn’t what I wanted to do,” she says.

Ditmars plans to complete a year of post-baccalaureate studies to finish her pre-med requirements. Nonetheless, she says her background in Social Studies is integral to her interest in becoming a doctor.

“If you’re studying medicine, it’s really important to have an understanding of the way a person’s social and cultural position affect ... health,” she says.

CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

Despite the benefits of pursuing their passions, several pre-meds who study the humanities or social sciences note that balancing divergent disciplines at Harvard comes with its own set of challenges.