“I was pre-law and pre-med during undergrad. I always wanted to be a doctor,” she said, explaining that her father always dreamed of his daughter becoming an attorney.
She graduated from Vanderbilt Law School, passed the bar and spent 10 years working at firms in Birmingham and Mobile. Along the way, she and her husband, Ali Zeidan, welcomed three children into the family. As the years passed, her desire to become a physician remained strong.
While still practicing law, Zeidan returned to college to complete the courses required to apply for medical school. She also took a job working nights as an emergency room scribe at a local hospital. It was during those evening shifts, where she took meticulous notes for physicians, that her decision to change careers was cemented.
A member of the class of 2022 at the University of South Alabama College of Medicine, Zeidan picked up a new white coat recently from a local uniform store to unofficially mark the beginning of her clinical duties as a third-year medical student this summer. The jackets of third and fourth-year medical students are differentiated from others by monogramming and a special patch.
“When I decided to go back to medical school, I knew it was going to be a 10-year journey,” she said. “I tell people no decision ever has to be final. Just because you decide to do something with your life doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind.”
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Medical student Melody Zeidan and her three children gather
around the dining room table to complete their schoolwork.
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From March until mid-May, her family of five worked exclusively from home, using their dining room as a makeshift classroom and office.
“A lot of my classmates were facing stress over board exams and whether we would be able to start our clinical duties in June as scheduled,” Zeidan said. “But honestly, I was just doing all I could to keep my head above water. I figured I would deal with the future when it arrived.”
Zeidan said her classmates at USA have remained in contact through the GroupMe app. “We have always done most of our class-wide communication through that platform or email.”
Sticking to a schedule at home has helped: “I’ve tried to maintain as much normalcy as possible in such a strange situation, to try to keep our stress levels down. We are all healthy and together. ... It’s a challenge, but we’ll get through it.”
Zeidan grew up in Wilcox County, Alabama. The daughter of a school teacher, her father served on the local school board. She was accepted into the Alabama School of Mathematics and Science (ASMS) her junior year and graduated at age 16. She earned an undergraduate degree from the University of Alabama, where she also met her husband.
Leaving home and attending the school of math and science in Mobile, she said, changed her life. “It was the best thing my parents ever did for me. It was my first exposure to anything outside of Wilcox County. I got so much encouragement there to learn.”
During certain semesters in high school, she traveled abroad for the first time and fell in love with the theater. Zeidan is already good with a needle, hand-making pageant costumes and more recently cloth face masks in her spare time. She also volunteers with the Junior League of Mobile and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of South Alabama mentoring program.
Zeidan serves as the research co-chair for USA’s Student Run Free Clinic. She’s also the finance chair-elect for the International Society of Student Run Free Clinics. She serves as the vice president of the Medical Spanish Interest Group and community service chair of the American Medical Women’s Association.
Zeidan said she’s interested in plastic surgery but keeping her options open: “The focus on both form and function in plastic surgery speaks to my creative side, and I think I would really enjoy doing reconstruction after traumatic injuries or cleft lip/palate repair. It’s still pretty early, though, so all I know for sure at this point is that I want to do a lot of procedures.”
