Volunteer Profile: Roxie Twedt

By Juliet Farmer

Roxie Twedt, SDN user name oxeye, is set to join the ranks of medical students at the University of Nevada School of Medicine come fall 2007. In the meantime, the San Francisco Bay Area native, who spent three years early on living in Tokyo, Japan, is helping the Student Doctor Network as the Assistant Mentor Coordinator, a moderator position in the Mentor Forum.

“I supervise the Promotion and Recruitment Assistants in the Mentoring Forum, and manage the mentors in the forum,” she explains of her role. “I maintain several tables of contents in the forum to make the threads easier for students to navigate and also cut down on some of the repetitive questions that mentors receive.”

“We want the forum to work well for mentors and SDN users, and a big part of my responsibility on SDN is making sure that the mentors and the SDN users are happy with the forum,” Twedt adds.

According to Twedt, there are several new projects in the mentor forum, including the medical student peer mentoring thread and the Confidential Consult subforum.

“All4MyDaughter, lilnoelle, and I are all working to get these projects going,” she says, adding, “I expect the new subforum to be very popular. It’s a discussion forum, so anyone from SDN can reply to discussion threads, but all posts will need to be approved by moderators. We hope this will encourage people with sensitive questions to ask for advice without fear of the thread getting off-topic or being personally attacked.”

SDN has the MCAT to thank for Twedt’s involvement in the forums. She found SDN via a partner site, momMD.com, when she was seeking advice about balancing medical school and children.

But something else kept her here.

“I stuck around SDN because I love how active the site is,” she explains. “I was studying for the MCAT at the time, so I spent a lot of time in the MCAT forum.”

Naturally, she was soon recruited as an SDN advisor in the MCAT forum. When the opportunity to join the staff of the Mentor Forum came up, Twedt was intrigued.

“I was excited to volunteer as an advisor in the Mentor Forum, because I think it is a wonderful resource that SDN is offering and I wanted to help out any way that I could,” she recalls. “I was promoted to Assistant Mentor Coordinator soon after joining the Mentor Forum staff.”

Twedt says in the short year and a half she’s been a member of SDN, she’s gotten a lot of use out of the site.

“I utilized the MCAT forum while I was studying for the exam and waiting for score release – and long afterwards,” she laughs. “During the medical school application process, I spent a lot of time reading the Pre-Allopathic Forum. I spend the majority of my time on SDN now in the Mentor Forum, but I’m sure I will continue to use all of the resources of SDN that are available to me as I progress in medical school, residency and beyond.”

SDN also provided assistance Twedt says she might not otherwise have had access to.

“As a non-traditional medical school applicant, SDN was a great help to me when I was applying, because I did not have access to the typical resources that pre-medical students have as undergraduates,” Twedt adds. “I have also made some very good friends on SDN and hope that we will all stay on SDN throughout our educations and beyond.”

As for those who may be new to SDN, Twedt offers some words of wisdom.

“Spend time reading the forums, particularly the stickies and Frequently Asked Questions that other SDN members have spent time putting together for your benefit,” she recommends. “Most importantly – post! Get to know other members and have fun. Regardless of where you are in your education process, it’s hard work and it’s stressful, so it’s nice to get on SDN and talk to people who can relate to what you’re going through. If you have specific questions, where you can’t find answers elsewhere on SDN, ask in the Mentor Forum. Navigate outside the forums as well. There are great articles posted regularly on the front page, and the blogs are very entertaining to read.”

She says seasoned SDN users can also help SDN continue to improve.

“Look around at that SDN is now compared to when you joined,” she says. “This growth is a result of a lot of time and effort on the part of all the volunteer staff, and we hope you like the changes. Are there any areas where you would be able to contribute to SDN’s continued growth and development? Speak up if you have ideas.”

Twedt, who’s been married nearly five years and has two daughters – one of whom will be four in September and the other who will be two at the end July – is currently enjoying her last summer as a stay-at-home mom. In addition to helping out SDN, she enjoys listening to classical music and playing the piano, and also likes to spend time with her numerous animals (dogs, a bird and perhaps soon, a kitten).

Twedt also has her eye on becoming a Child Passenger Safety Technician within the next year.

“I enjoy helping other parents,” she concludes. “My two focuses are breastfeeding and education about proper use of car seats. I’m a Certified Lactation Counselor and a Child Passenger Safety Assistant. I expect to have time to take a course to become a Child Passenger Safety Technician next summer.”