1. Could you introduce yourself to us all?
I’m a senior here at Emory. I started off my first two years at Oxford. I am from Georgia, 15 minutes outside of Atlanta. I live on-campus and am a biology major on the pre-med track. So far, my journey through Emory has been an interesting one. It’s been pretty full of challenges and ups and downs, but I’m really thankful for all the friendships and all my experiences, both good and bad. I don’t think I would change too much, honestly.
2. What have been impactful events that have led you to this pre-health track?
Well first off, doctors have been a huge part of my life: from going through different illnesses in the family, growing up going in and out of the hospital, and in my own life going through my own illnesses and sickness. From an early age up to now, I’ve been fortunate to have good experiences with the physicians that have taken care of my family and me, even if it didn’t always turn out like we wanted it to. We’ve had doctors pay bills for us, front the costs for surgery, etc. Seeing all of that while growing up put doctors on a pedestal. This experience combined with the passion I have for science and people helped me realize this profession of being a physician allows me to combine these two passions, both of which I genuinely enjoy. But, I wanted to make sure that this is really what I wanted. Over the years, I’ve tested myself to make sure becoming a physician is what I really want to do and that I wasn’t pursuing this career just for the money. For a couple years, I did emergency medical services (EMS), among the shadowing, volunteering, and research, and loved it. Of course, there are issues with any profession. But as far as patients go and the medical side of the job, I loved it. Through my EMS experiences, I was still able to hold my passion for science and people, so EMS played a huge role in solidifying my decision to become a physician.
3. What has been the most difficult part of your journey?
The most difficult part was figuring out how to pay for everything, whether it was tuition, food, or gas. Although my parents would love to pay for everything I ever needed, sadly, they are unable to help out financially; I’m financially independent. This is still the hardest part of my journey currently, but we’ve made it this far. Emory has played a big part in helping me financially through the difficulties of college life as someone who is financially on his own. I’ve been fortunate to be a part of the scholar’s program, which has helped with paying a significant portion of my tuition for my Junior and Senior years, and the Emory Together fund greatly helped me out when COVID hit. I am definitely grateful for all of the financial help that Emory has given me.
4. What do you think is a challenge the pre-health or pre-med community faces?
My mind immediately goes to what these communities will face as they continue their journeys past college. One thing I learned through EMS is trying to balance your emotions. In those moments when you see someone go through something truly traumatic or see someone pass away on the job, and you know you did everything you could and it still didn’t matter, being able to balance those emotions and not let them overwhelm you is something I’ve gone through many times. Learning to not let emotions get to you but at the same time not becoming stone-cold about life and people and the way the world works is something I’ve found to be quite a challenge in my experiences in healthcare.
5. If you could start over, what would you change?
Sounds crazy, but I think I would have slowed down just a little bit. I was in EMS school at the same time as starting college and getting financially thrown in on my own. In addition, I was in different clubs and extracurriculars and taking 18 credit hours in my first semester. I didn’t start slowing down until second semester junior year and wished I could have slowed down a little sooner and still done as much as I could in order to balance out my social life and give myself time to pursue interesting things. I wish I could have slowed down to grow myself as a person and put less weight on growing a resume.
6. Do you think the trend of taking the traditional path (applying to medical school the summer of your junior year in college) influenced you not willing to slow down throughout your undergraduate career?
Absolutely. When you think about it, taking a gap year isn’t really an option for me because I can't afford it. That’s something that when you look around and see people who are financially stable, they have the luxury to choose gap year or no gap year, things like that, you want to keep pace with them but then realize they have more options than you do. So yes, with slowing down you may have to take one or two things off your resume but at the end of the day if you get burnt out it doesn’t really matter what you have on your resume if you can’t hold your own. The environment of pre-health/pre-med can get to you but you need to plan accordingly and not only know what is best for you but follow through and take care of yourself.
6. What is the best advice you could give to someone considering becoming a physician?
Do your research. Make sure it’s something you really want to do because it’s hard and rough. If you have the opportunity to shadow or work in healthcare to see the real-world aspects of the profession, take it. It doesn’t have to be in EMS, but if you could be in an ER or in an ambulance I would highly suggest putting yourself in those circumstances. There will be issues about the healthcare system that come to light. Experiencing those situations first-hand, where you’re working in the field and responsible for the patient, changes your perspective on those issues and allows them to hit you in a different way. If you could go through that and come out still wanting to be pre-med, you’re pretty much set with knowing where your passions truly lie.