UCLA Journal of Radiation Oncology Fall and Winter 2022 - Flipbook - Page 23
UCLA RADIATION ONCOLOGY JOURNAL
Our Editor recently had a chance
to catch up with new faculty
member, UCLA Radiation
Oncology Residency alum, and
Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Luca Valle.
While I was the first person in my family to
go to medical school, two of my aunts were
nurses and I remember really enjoying hearing
about their cases and their patients during my
formative middle and high school years. These
experiences definitely helped point me in the
direction of a career of service in healthcare,
and it has been exciting and fulfilling for me to
encourage some of my younger family members
to pursue their own healthcare careers.
Talk to me about your childhood and
upbringing. Do any other family members
work in medicine? Do you have siblings?
Am I mistaken that you have an arts
background? What was your trajectory into
medicine?
L: When my dad immigrated to the US, he spoke
little English and really hustled doing odd jobs
to keep us afloat when I was little. He worked
at restaurants, construction companies, local
TV stations, and other odd jobs. He eventually
pursued a Master’s degree in communications
and has been a professor of graphic design at
North Idaho College for the past twenty years.
He’s absolutely in love with his work and the
program he has built for aspiring designers. My
mom worked too at first, but ultimately decided
to become a stay-at-home mom because she
didn’t want to miss a beat of parenting. When
we were a little older and my dad went back to
school, she went back to work, and she really hit
her stride as a registrar at a local alternative high
school.
L: I was involved in theater in high school, but
I’ve always been more of a "behind the scenes"
type of guy. I really loved designing the lighting
for shows because it was the perfect mix of
the artistic and the technical and it forced me
to think in three dimensions. In hindsight, I
suppose the writing was on the wall that I was
destined for a career in radiation oncology,
which is similar to lighting design only with
much higher energy light! A drawback, however,
of attending a very small high school (24 in my
class), is that I was not-so-gently encouraged to
audition for some on-stage roles as well. So I
wound up being the reluctant lead in a couple of
productions – Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop
of Horrors was probably my favorite.
While we were certainly afforded some
privileges growing up that others weren’t, my
younger brother and I had a simple childhood
and upbringing. We were very lucky to have
grown up with a lot of family around. There
were fourteen cousins among us, and we were
all quite close. We’d celebrate all the major
holidays and birthdays together, and it has been
really nice to take these close family friendships
into adulthood.
I also had a brief stint as a cast member at
Disneyland before going to medical school.
It was incredible to be surrounded by such
creative people. They had me doing a lot of
different things over the years, but I think being
a skipper on the "World Famous" Jungle Cruise
was probably among the most memorable. The
jokes were dry and the waterfalls were wet, but
the storytelling aspect was really fun and I loved
sharing fun facts about the flora, fauna, and
sandstone rock formations in Walt’s jungle –
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