SPRINGHILL – Forrest Gallagher has seen his share of emergency rooms.
While playing minor hockey and baseball and a season with the Cumberland County Blues, the 22-year-old Springhill native suffered his share of scrapes, bumps and bruises – not to mention a broken collarbone, write and ankle.
“Playing sports growing up I broke a lot of bones,” Gallagher said. “I got to spend a lot of time in the hospital and got to see how it works. I got to see the good side of it and how good the doctors are and I got to see the not so good parts of how stressed the system is and the problems with wait times for things like CT scans.”
Wanting to challenge himself and set his goals as high as he could, plus seeing the need for more doctors, Gallagher decided in his final years of high school that he wanted to be a doctor and in September he will do something not many young people from Cumberland County get to experience – he’s going into medical school at Dalhousie University.
That goal took a major step forward last week when he crossed the stage at Convocation Hall in Sackville, N.B. to receive his bachelor of science degree in biochemistry, graduating first class honours with distinction.
“I was really happy with my choice, choosing to go to Mount A,” Gallagher said. “For me, it was all about variety. I knew I was going to be busy studying, but I wanted to do all the extra things like coach minor hockey and keeping my ties to the community without completely uprooting and moving somewhere else to go to school.”
Gallagher chose Mount Allison because it allows for a close, personal relationship between students and professors thanks to smaller class sizes than you’d see at bigger schools like Dalhousie.
“At Dal, you would have 400 or 500 people in your class, while at Mount Allison it would be 100 or so, or in my final year or two when it was 15 or 20 in my biochem class,” Gallagher said. “When you’re looking after high school at going to medical school you have to think about picking a school that’s going to get you where you want to go, and where will you have the most success. People said I wouldn’t get accepted at medical school out of Mount A because it’s a smaller school, or because it’s a liberal arts school, but I found it really prepared me. I spent 3,000 hours in the lab and did research right out of second year. I got all that experience I wouldn’t have gotten at a larger school.”
Despite his busy school schedule, he still found time to spend hours on the local hockey rinks coaching the Cumberland County Bantam AA Ramblers and has spent several springs and summers coaching in the Atlantic Hockey Group as well as at the Daniel Cleary Hockey School in Newfoundland.
While some might find the study schedule too rigorous, Gallagher made sure he had time for coaching and giving back to the community because it helped clear his mind and relieve some study stress.
“I knew I had to get so much done before I went to hockey, or I knew if I had a test coming I had to do so much before I could go to the rink. It really helped me plan by day and helped motivate me,” he said. “Going into the rink and being around the dressing room and being around the kids was one of the best ways to relieve stress. I found that when I got back I was in a much clearer mind and it helped me with my studies.”
Getting accepted into medical school is no easy feat, Gallagher said. There’s application letters, reference letters, resumes and essays. Then there’s a series of interviews and a long waiting game to see if you were successful or not.
“Normally, it it’s good they will say congratulations or if it’s bad it will be thank you for your application. Mine said ‘your application status has been updated.’ I thought I hadn’t been accepted, but when I signed in this PDF popped up and there was my acceptance letter,” he said.
Gallagher hasn't decided if he’ll go into sports medicine or orthopedics, but he has also worked a lot with Dr. Brian Ferguson and is strongly considering being a general practitioner.
“Dr. Ferguson has really taken me under his wing and I have come to really enjoy working with him and being around the emergency department,” Gallagher said. “It’s stressful, but it’s exciting. It’s like a sports atmosphere in that you never know what you’re going to get or what you’re going to have to deal with. I think that’s for me.”
Twitter: @ADNdarrell
