{"id":275,"date":"2023-08-07T19:25:37","date_gmt":"2023-08-07T19:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/?p=275"},"modified":"2023-08-07T19:25:37","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T19:25:37","slug":"two-shades-of-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/2023\/08\/07\/two-shades-of-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Two shades of green"},"content":{"rendered":"
Members of the Herd have been all over the globe this summer, sporting Kelly green and exploring the world they\u2019re going to change. For 23-year-old Holly Edwards, a second-year student at Marshall University\u2019s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, that has meant donning a different shade of green and undergoing six weeks of intensive training in Oklahoma and Texas. She\u2019s embarking on two entirely new endeavors: How to be an officer in the U.S. Army and how to be an Army physician.<\/p>\n

As a participant in the Army Health Professions Scholarship Program, she\u2019s on her way to working as a physician in the U.S. Army, with the Army covering the cost of medical school and Holly committing to active duty after her residency.<\/p>\n

\n\t“I wanted to be in the military and serve my country in some way. I thought, \u2018What a great opportunity that I can do both \u2013 that I can be a doctor and do that.”<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Holly Edwards<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cI thought that was a really great option for me,\u201d said Edwards, who has had her eye on becoming a doctor since high school. \u201cI knew, sometime, I wanted to be in the military and serve my country in some way. I thought, \u2018What a great opportunity that I can do both \u2013 that I can be a doctor and do that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Military service and health professions run the family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI come from a long line of military family. Both my grandfathers were Army, my uncle went to the Coast Guard Academy, my mom and dad were both in the Navy and served in Operation Desert Storm,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cI just really have always been involved in military culture and I have always had a strong love for my country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Edwards\u2019 parents are both nurses at Cabell Huntington Hospital. Her mother, Marnie Edwards is a nurse anesthetist and her father, Grant Edwards is an O.R. nurse.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents in the medical field helped me get connected for sure,\u201d she said. \u201cGrowing up, I hurt my ankle a couple times playing basketball, and my orthopedic surgeon was a family friend, Dr. David Soulsby. He worked in Charleston and was a huge role model for me. He always supported me and my endeavors to be a doctor, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

She volunteered at hospitals in middle and high school, and shadowed doctors during high school. \u201cI just really liked it,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew I wanted to serve my community in a way that I could help people get better, health-wise, and have a better outlook on their future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having grown up in Hurricane, West Virginia, Edwards graduated from Teays Valley Christian School in 2018, where she played basketball and volleyball, serving as team captain. She earned her undergraduate degree at Marshall, majoring in biology and minoring in chemistry and psychology, also serving as financial vice president and then president for her sorority, Alpha Xi Delta.<\/p>\n

And she\u2019s thrilled to be a student in the Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine. \u201cI do love Marshall med school. The staff is great. They would really do anything for you,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel right at home and am really happy with my decision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her introduction to military service came with combined training sessions this summer, the Direct Commission Course (DCC) and Basic Officer Leadership Course (BOLC), which are combined into a fast-track program for the students in the Health Professions Scholarship Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first three weeks of summer, I was doing my DCC at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and then the second three weeks, I was at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas,\u201d she said. \u201cThe first three weeks in Oklahoma \u2014 it was a lot of learning basic military language, terminology, different things we need to know for how to be a military leader as an officer. We also learned how to wear a uniform, how to stand correctly and salute and talk to our peers and higher-ranking officers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even being raised in a military family, it was a little strange to be submerged in the military culture so quickly, Edwards said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m second lieutenant and will be captain when I graduate from med school,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting because here we are, having never worn a military uniform in our whole life and have never done anything military-wise, and the first day, we put on the uniform and we\u2019re walking to lunch and we have all these people saluting us on the way, and it almost doesn\u2019t feel right,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Being a military officer as well as a doctor is probably the most unexpected aspect of her future endeavors, she said.<\/p>\n

\n\t“There will be a lot of balancing my officer duties with my physician duties.”<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t- Holly Edwards<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n

\u201cThere will be a lot of balancing my officer duties with my physician duties,\u201d she said. \u201cI assumed I would just be a doctor for the most part, but no. I will have a lot of officer duties and people to lead and command and other responsibilities that play into it. It\u2019s fine with me \u2013 I signed up for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The second three weeks of her training this summer in San Antonio involved learning the basics of a military platoon and hands-on, field training.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was like what you imagine your typical staying-in-the-field is,\u201d she said. \u201cWe stayed in a tent with the cots lined up and had a tent shower thing, and we had MREs which are those pre-packaged meals for when you\u2019re out the middle of nowhere. You have to add water and heat it up. We also did target practice with the M4s and learned a lot of medic techniques. We did torniquets and bandaging and a lot of stuff like that. It was really fun.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt did get up to 110 degrees out there, so we had to be mindful of drinking our water at all times, but being from West Virginia, I\u2019ve gone camping a few times \u2013 so it wasn\u2019t that big of a culture shock.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, there was a physical fitness aspect to the summer training as well, with each participant being required to pass the Army Combat Fitness Test, a test that everyone in the military has to take every six months, Edwards explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s kind of hard \u2013 one event is called the sprint-drag-carry,\u201d she said. \u201cYou sprint 50 yards, up and back, and then you drag a 90-pound sled 50 yards, up and back, and then you run with 40-pound kettle bells up and back. That\u2019s pretty difficult, honestly, especially for all of us med students. Come on, not all of us are in super great shape.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a test that involves throwing a weighted ball backwards over your head, push-ups, plank, and a two-mile run at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all made it through,\u201d she said, adding that this summer and fall, she\u2019ll be training for the Marshall University Half Marathon, which should help her stay in shape.<\/p>\n

She was among 300 students participating in the six weeks of training, which included future doctors, dentists and veterinarians, and she was the only one from West Virginia.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m happy I could represent,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cI don\u2019t really know what the future will hold but one day, if I\u2019m out of the Army, I definitely feel like I would come back to the Huntington area. I do love Marshall and its family culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s eager to see what the future will bring.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very excited for what the future holds for me in the Army,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cThere are so many opportunities \u2013 where I could end up, what I could do and where I could go.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the Herd have been all over the globe this summer, sporting Kelly green and exploring the world they\u2019re going to change. For 23-year-old Holly Edwards, a second-year student at Marshall University\u2019s Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine, that has meant donning a different shade of green and undergoing six weeks of intensive training […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":198,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moments"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/198"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marshall.edu\/moments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}