2022 graduate heading for medical school with the goal to be an MD or DO

Abigail Theis, 23, graduated from Inver Hills Community College in 2022 with an Associate of Arts (A.A.), the college’s number one transfer degree. Abigail transferred to the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, where she completed a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Human Physiology.

Abigail is continuing her education and has applied to a multitude of medical schools with the goal to become a medical doctor (MD) or doctor of osteopathic medicine (OD). She presently works as a medical scribe, ambassador, and trainer for the Emergency Physicians Professional Association (EPPA) in the North Memorial Emergency Department (ED) in Robbinsdale and Maple Grove, Minnesota.

“I can’t say for sure right now what type of physician I would like to become—you have to match into a residency after med school to determine that,” Abigail said, “but I have a lot of interest in emergency and rural medicine since I have really enjoyed my time in the ED and after seeing the need for more physicians in rural settings while spending most of my summers growing up in rural Minnesota.”

During her time at Inver Hills, Abigail served as a peer tutor focused on Human Anatomy & Physiology, General Chemistry, and English coursework. She credits two English courses, The Research Paper and Introduction to Creative Writing, both taught by Ellen Lansky, English faculty at the college, with greatly improving her writing skills.

“I have been working as a medical scribe in an ER for over a year,” she recently wrote Ellen, “and what I learned from you has been incredibly useful in writing quickly and concisely. The content from your classes has also been indispensable when writing research papers in undergrad and knowing how to find credible sources. Additionally, I was able to realize how much I loved teaching when I tutored for your class, which has made me excited to interact with patients as a physician.”

Abigail worked as a home health aide at Dignified Choice Care in Burnsville, Minnesota, while attending Inver Hills, a role that gave her invaluable insights into patient care. She currently volunteers at Visible Heart Laboratories (VHL) in the UMN Medical School Institute for Engineering in Medicine. She also volunteers at Campus Ministry, a Christian college and young adults work group in St. Paul.

An outstanding student at Inver Hills and the U of M, Abigail made the Dean’s List at both schools. She received the Award for Outstanding Academic Achievement from the U of M’s Department of German, Nordic, Slavic & Dutch for 2023–2024.

Inver Hills faculty perspectives

“Abigail Theis was a courageous and diligent student. She showed up for classes on Zoom, met deadlines,  and came to office hours (also on Zoom) to ask questions and seek clarification and feedback, which people are often reluctant to do.

“Abigail was always very ‘present,’ a situation perhaps best illustrated by the fact that she always had her camera on during Zoom classes.”

Ellen Lansky, PhD
English Faculty
Inver Hills Community College

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“Abigail was a student in my advanced Biology 2202 course—and she was curious beyond compare and understood the material at great depth.”

Lisa Tracy, MS
Biology Faculty
Inver Hills Community College

More about Abigail…

Originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, Abigail graduated from Trinity School at River Ridge in Eagan, Minnesota, Class of 2020. Her dad, John, works as an industrial designer to design various hospital devices such as desks.

“Fun fact: I use a mobile desk at work that my dad designed about 15 years ago,” Abigail reported. “He also went to Inver Hills as a first-generation college student and ended up finishing his bachelor’s degree at UW Stout.”

Abigail’s mom, Jen, works in the business department of a Christian nonprofit organization. She graduated from St. Thomas with a bachelor’s degree in business.

Abigail has three siblings, two brothers and one sister. “My older brother, Jacob, received an engineering degree at St. Thomas and is currently working as a high school physics teacher,” she said. “My younger sister, Anna, is a sophomore at St. Thomas and is studying business. My younger brother, Joe, is a high school senior and is planning on going into mathematics.”

Abigail’s family has one cat named Leo, who’s a little troublemaker due to his curiosity, but enjoys a good head scratch and is very friendly.

In her free time, Abigail enjoys a full range of pastimes and hobbies, including cooking and face painting.

“My mom made a lot of regular home-cooked meals,” she said, “and so now I am spoiled and prefer cooking my own food to going out.”

Abigail did a lot of face painting for plays or fairs while growing up. “I found that it was both something I was good at and a way to entertain kids, so it was often a handy skill to have in large group settings, or while I was babysitting.”

She added that she took a theater makeup class at Inver Hills, which helped her level up her face-painting skill set. She can use her stage makeup/face painting skills in her studies since those skills allow her to watch how a muscle or bone might move by painting it directly on a body.

Abigail’s additional pastimes and hobbies:

Graphite drawing: “Also useful in studying human anatomy—my flashcards are artwork!”

Plant and animal care: “I enjoy the challenge of keeping plants and animals healthy, and I currently have four fish and about 20 plants that are doing very well!”

Reading, classics by Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy: “My favorite by Tolstoy is the novella, Death of Ivan Ilych. I haven’t had time to read many of his longer stories, but I’m hoping to get to Anna Karenina soon. I grew up reading these stories, so the idea of somebody who is just trying to do something good throughout hardship is a very significant theme to me.”

Suturing: “It’s surprisingly relaxing. I use a silicone pad, of course, to practice the stitching.”

Abigail resides with her family in St. Paul.

Abigail family and life gallery

Abigail Theis • Q & A

What motivated you to choose healthcare as your career focus?

Two reasons

ONE: Unlike many students pursuing medical school, I didn’t actually want to pursue medicine as a kid. Instead, I wanted to be a dolphin trainer or write books for a living. However, I come from a very large family that is well acquainted with suffering/grief and through them I was able to witness incredible feats of compassion and care for each other. I watched multiple family members pass away from various cancers or tragic accidents, all the while with a rotating door of family members dropping off meals or staying to care for both the ill family member and their more immediate family.

I remember when my grandfather was in hospice care for two months, he had at least one other family member staying with him 24/7 for the entirety of those two months until he passed peacefully in his sleep. To me, this made such care commonplace, and it wasn’t until I began to work as a home health aide when I realized that the degree of care that my family regularly gave each other was rare and incredibly expensive.

This encouraged me to consider medicine as a career path since I was able to see the significance that such a dedicated level of care can have both on a person with health struggles and their caregivers.

TWO: I knew since graduating high school that I wanted to go into medicine and then the human physiology class at Inver Hills allowed me to realize my fascination with the intricacies of the human body. The professor that I had then—Lisa Tracy—was very encouraging when I brought up how I had been thinking about pursuing an MD or DO, and so I started looking into what that process and career would look like.

I then continued to pursue as much experience as possible to try and gauge whether or not both medicine and being a physician would be a good fit for me. Being able to become more involved in healthcare as a home health aid and scribe further encouraged me to pursue medicine.

I have been able to watch physicians interact with hundreds of patients by this point and have watched the “behind the scenes” process of patient care in the ED as well as getting my own experience with direct patient care as an aide, so I have a lot more confidence that pursuing a career as a physician is the right path for me.

Three words that describe you as an Inver Hills graduate:
INQUISITIVE. OPENMINDED. RESOURCEFUL.

How did your coursework at Inver Hills prepare you to transfer to the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities?

My advisor recommended that I complete the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (MnTC), which made the actual transfer of my credits to the UMN very easy and allowed me a lot of space to explore my interests. Because of that, I was able to take creative writing, theater makeup, psychology, and human physiology (naturally), which helped me to learn of my actual career goals by giving me the flexibility to explore different paths.

Because I did this through Inver Hills, I was able to graduate with my associate degree soon after COVID without any debt and with a much better understanding of what I wanted to pursue.

What do you find most rewarding about your work as a medical scribe in the North Memorial Emergency Department?

Numerous things:

• I really enjoy training new scribes. It gives me the opportunity to teach new scribes all of the medical terminology/presentations that I have learned over the past 1.5 years and how to work Epic. I also appreciate being able to encourage people when they are learning something that I know from my own training can be very intimidating both due to the sheer amount of information that you have to learn and adjusting to the unusual culture of the ED.
• My fellow scribes. All of the scribes are in the pre-health track and so we all understand the toll that trying to get into a medical or PA school can take. There is a lot of encouragement and teaching that goes around during a single shift among the scribes. I have had so many people share free MCAT study resources with me or offered recommendations on how to apply for medical school.
• I like the hustle. You never know what is going to come through the door and most shifts feel like a mad rush to the end, after which you can walk away from work until you return instead of bringing it home with you.
• The variability. You can go from one room where a patient is dealing with a life threatening condition to another room just next door where someone is here for a stubbed toe. It serves as a reminder to appreciate the health that you have now and to use the time that you have wisely. I am still regularly reminded to drink a lot of water whenever someone comes in with a kidney stone….
• The medicine!!! Emergency medicine is fascinating! It tends to be a little bit of everything and being able to work with physicians in their chart allows us to learn about how different tests (blood work, scans, etc) are pertinent for various conditions. Many of the physicians that I work with are also willing to answer questions that I have throughout the shift, so I’ve been able to develop a much better understanding of what they are looking for based on a patient’s presentation.
• Scrubs. I basically get to wear pajamas to work.

Three words that describe you as a healthcare professional:
CURIOUS. COMMITTED. COMPASSIONATE. (Three Cs 🙂)

What are you looking forward to most in medical school?

Most of my undergrad has been preparing for med school by studying a wide variety of topics in order to develop a solid base of knowledge. While I think that developing a solid understanding is a wise endeavor, I’m really looking forward to taking classes that are more directly pertinent in medicine.

What person has influenced your life the most and why?

My sister. Even though she is almost four years younger than me, she has helped me to learn how to have healthy conflict resolution, how to listen well, and how to have a healthy work/life balance. She and I have supported each other through various difficulties in life including deaths, chronic illnesses, and life changes. While we didn’t always get along while we were growing up, she is one of my closest friends now.

If you could make one thing happen on Earth right now, what would it be?

Ummmm, where do I start? This is a very political question…I suppose making healthcare in the U.S. more accessible.

One word that best describes your experience at Inver Hills:

SUPPORTIVE

Abigail Theis • 12 Answers

1. Favorite sport or physical activity: Swing dancing
2. Place you would most like to visit: Black Forest in Germany
3. Most exciting thing you’ve ever done: Held a beating pig heart while the pig was being used for cardiac research and was under deep anesthesia
4. Three things you would do if you won a $1 billion lottery: 1) Pay for medical school 🙂 2) Start some sort of health clinic with my sister who is currently studying business 3) My car is pretty old and has been making more and more strange noises lately, so I’d probably also get a newer car
5. Best book or movie you’ve read or seen lately: Book: A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain; Movie: Jo Jo Rabbit
6. Time period you would explore if you could time travel: I studied a lot of classical literature, so I think I would enjoy about 200 AD; I would probably first check out the Library of Alexandria
7. One thing you most want to accomplish in life: I’d like to publish a collection of short stories
8. Your national bird if you were your own country: Crow—I appreciate their intelligence, mischievousness, and ability to communicate with one another
9. Dream occupation: Physician
10. Person you would most like to meet: C. S. Lewis, though that may be a bit tricky considering he is dead
11. Skill you would most like to learn and master: Becoming fluent in more languages, baking bread, and auto mechanics
12. Most important issue or problem facing humankind: Fear and human nature’s self-serving tendencies

Learn more about earning an Associate of Arts (A.A.) at Inver Hills by contacting:

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651-450-3902
866-576-0689
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More about earning your Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree at Inver Hills…

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