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When Ben graduated in 1997, having attended Hillbrook from 5th grade, he heard the oft repeated motto \u201cDo Your Best\u201d from then-Head of School Mr. Clements. \u201cHonestly, that [saying] stuck with me a lot,\u201d he says. \u201cCorollary to that, I remember my anatomy professor at Mount Sinai, the first day of anatomy, one of the first days of med school, said, \u2018Whatever the task at hand, do it exquisitely.\u2019\u201d Ben reflects these mottoes in his own life. He believes that \u201cAll you can do is do your best, so control what you can control, and anything that’s worth doing is worth doing right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben credits Hillbrook with teaching him how to learn. In both his life and career, Ben says, \u201cthe foundation of knowing how to learn is invaluable.\u201d A year-round athlete, he played football, basketball, and softball for the school. He especially loved competing in the annual basketball tournament held on campus and the community brought together on campus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Hillbrook, Ben attended Los Gatos High School, where he played baseball and continued his Spanish studies, as well as excelled in the sciences. He attended Pomona College, where he majored in neurology and was captain of the baseball team and an all-conference player. Inspired by his learning at Hillbrook and his favorite teacher, Ms. Martin, Ben minored in Spanish, spending six months in Salmanca, Spain. His strong interest in science led him to pursue medical school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Through each step toward his career, he gravitated toward areas that were exciting to him and sparked his interest, the same feeling he had when learning at Hillbrook. At Mount Sinai Medical School, he decided to pursue a residency in urology and was matched to UC Irvine. While there, he switched to anesthesiology because it was a better fit. He stayed at UC Irvine to complete a fellowship in cardiac anesthesiology and began his career in Southern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben\u2019s career track was not an easy one. \u201cI definitely had my doubts as to whether I was going to be able to get into medical school. At every level, there were times when I said, \u2018I don’t think I can do this.\u2019\u201d But Ben committed to doing the hard work of med school, residency, and fellowships. According to Ben, \u201cIf you want to be a doctor, you\u2019ve got to slug along, and there’s no easy way to do it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
After all the hard work, he finds his job rewarding. \u201cI love my job,\u201d he says. \u201cIt’s such an honor and privilege to be able to take care of people and have them entrust me with their care.\u201d A living example of reaching beyond himself to make a difference in the world, Ben touches the lives of his patients daily as he helps manage pain and prepare patients for surgeries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January 2020, Ben moved back to Los Gatos to take a job at G2 Anesthesia and to be near family and friends. Soon after the move, COVID hit, and Ben\u2019s job changed–first, a suspended work schedule, and then work with COVID patients. The work has been intense, using his experience as an anesthesiologist to intubate COVID patients while wearing a Powered Air Purifying Respirator that limits his ability to communicate. Ben\u2019s skill set has prepared him to serve his community in ways he didn\u2019t anticipate.<\/p>\n\n\n
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As Ben thinks back to his time at Hillbrook, he remembers the friends and fun, and speaks fondly of his teachers. \u201cMrs. Mullin was my sixth grade teacher. I was not always the most motivated student. And I think she saw that and found a way to pique my interest to get me engaged when it wasn’t cool to be engaged.\u201d He still sees his former history teacher Ms. Gies around town. \u201cShe was a good mentor and role model,\u201d he says. His favorite tradition was the weekly Flag raising, where the students and faculty came together, as they still do, to start the week together as a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ben has advice for current Hillbrook students: \u201cDo well in school, follow what interests you, and pick an emphasis and a job that brings you joy. Not one that’s going to make you the most money or give you the most prestige, but pick a field where work isn’t going to seem like work.\u201d Words he has lived by himself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Ben Shanker was an eighth-grader at Hillbrook, hanging out with his friends on the upper field, he hadn\u2019t yet imagined that he might be …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/ben-shanker-square.png?fit=1068%2C1068","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1619"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2006,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1619\/revisions\/2006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1619"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1619"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1619"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}