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by Digsmith staff writers 
Hetfield, an aspiring pediatrician, classifies herself as a lifetime "coaster": a naturally gifted young student who could frustrate parents and teachers alike with her ability to effortlessly earn top marks with minimal studying. In high school, Hetfield parlayed her talent into additional leisure time, but upon arriving in Rochester as an undergraduate with doctoral ambitions, she faced a harsh reality: "I was getting overloaded with so much material in my science courses, I could no longer simply attend class and ace the tests," she recounts. "The problem was; I had no idea how to study. And I needed to learn. Fast." After experimenting with a number of different methods, Hetfield eventually found success with flash cards, and her examination woes disappeared. She graduated summa cum laude in 2004 with a B.S. in microbiology and an acceptance to Rochester's prestigious medical school in-hand. But when classes began that fall, a perplexing new problem emerged: while Hetfield's method helped her memorize the more complex material, it was the easiest details that were escaping her. "It was a bizarre mental block," describes Hetfield. "I was focusing so intently on the difficult information that I became absent-minded and couldn't remember common names. Ask me to discuss the physiological function of the greater omentum, or to describe RNA synthesis, and I was fine. But tell me to point out my knee, and I was helpless." After struggling through the first semester of graduate school, Hetfield acknowledged that her old tactics were no longer effective. "I could stare at "neck" on a flash card 'til I was blue in the face," recounts Hetfield, who is quick to point out that severe hypoxia could also cause a person's face to take on a blue discoloration. "But the second you took the flash cards away, everything I had learned was gone. There were huge gaps in my knowledge. I needed something else." To that end, she devoted her winter break to finding a solution. 
"I tried everything. I wrote poems about body parts. I read Harlequin Romance novels featuring lavish descriptions of the human body. I read Gray's Anatomy. I watched Grey's Anatomy. I would even walk around the city and point at the bodies of strangers and try to identify the parts. Nothing was working. So finally, one morning as I was getting dressed, I decided to write the names of every body part on my clothing, so I could never get away from the terms." Hetfield spent the rest of the afternoon finding articles of clothing and labeling them with permanent marker: "This is knee," read one pair of khaki pants. "This is ear," described the lower right side of a knit winter hat. And, in the process, Hetfield happened to scrawl, "This is hip" near the bottom left seam of a ribbed tank top. "When I made it, I didn't even realize the play on words. I just made 'this is hip' in between my 'this is neck' scarf and my 'this is ankle' socks. I really didn't think anything of it." But while Hetfield didn't think much of the shirts, her peers certainly did. She hadn't been wearing her "This is Hip" shirt for more than a week before buzz started to build around campus. Students and faculty began stopping her after class and emailing the bewildered student at night to inquire about purchasing one of her shirts. Before Hetfield knew it, she had sold a dozen of the shirts, which she had screen-printed to ensure quality and durability. 
"I was caught completely off-guard," says Hetfield, with a laugh. "Not once had I considered the shirt to be anything trendy or stylish. If anything, I thought it looked pathetic. I mean, I was labeling my hip so I would remember what it was called! The next thing I knew, everyone at school was buying them and all of my student loans were paid off!” says Hetfield. All of which certainly put Hetfield in a comfortable financial position heading into her third year of school. But, she says the shirts had an even better side effect. "I got so caught up distributing the shirts, I didn't have time to worry about my problem," says Hetfield. "And all of a sudden, with that stress lifted, everything came back to me. I didn't need the labels anymore. There I was, running a business on the side, and my grades actually improved!" And so, though the path had a number of unexpected turns, Hetfield solved her problem—for the time being, at least. "If it comes back later in life when I'm practicing medicine, I'll just have to deal with it. I'm not going to worry about that for now,” she says. Plus," she adds with a laugh, "something tells me I'll never forget where my hip is ever again!" Thanks to Hetfield's shirt, neither will countless other girls. |
