Personal Narrative: My Passion For Pediatric Care

My grandfather, a pediatrician for forty years, was the first college graduate in his family. His home office was my daycare. From my earliest memories, education and medicine was often a topic of discussion when my family gathered. I heard the conversations about college applications and essays and saw the anticipation awaiting acceptance. I saw the excitement of “getting in” multiple times throughout my life. As professionals, passionate about their careers, I hear conversations of patients and students. The UCONN graduates in my family are a testament not only to the high quality of education UCONN offers, but the quality of people it forms and the contagious, positive experiences they want to share from college and

I always thought I’d be the perfect girl growing up. Always taking home Honor Rolls, as well as Certificates, but sometimes mistakes happen and can make your whole world change upside down. You never think things can happen to you, until it happens and you’re left there with nothing but tears streaming from your face and being scared to tell anyone. Thinking that maybe it is better if your life was taken from you. The year 2016 was a hard year for me. I think about my mistakes from time to time and often wonder what would have happened if that had not have happened to me. I am a Haitian-American born in Naples, Florida. Seeing the people around me in my ethnicity group, not really thinking they are able to make it into college due to financial

Haling from a family that puts major emphasis on the importance of education, the thought of college was never a yes or no question in my mind. I was to attend a university after I graduated high school. My upbringing taught me that formal education is not something to take lightly and was inevitably expected of me. With the added pressure of graduating with a class of over 1200 students, I felt great accomplishment in attending my parent’s alma mater. However, the path towards my future career was still opaque. My passion was so unclear. Beginning college in a field of study I did not enjoy, my freshman and sophomore years proved to be greatly disheartening. It was not until I took a course contrasting graduate school and medical school that I finally felt the spark that I had been so desperately searching for. Fortunately, the opportunity to shadow a physician was readily available, and that’s when it dawned on me what exactly my future was fated to entail. The trials of of unhappiness in my early studies, coupled with the two monumental realizations in my sophomore year, set forth my personal journey towards a lifetime of medical practice.

I entered high school feeling like a traveler beginning a journey toward an unknown destination along pathways shrouded in fog. I had an inkling of where I wanted to go, but my ambitions of medicine were hazy and unformed, tinged with the suspicion that a great chasm lay between dreams and reality. No amount of straining brought my road or where it could take me into focus; I needed a guide, an experienced traveler to give me confidence on my path. I needed someone who could hold my hand where the way was unclear and lead me to a place I could never reach alone. I needed more than a teacher; I needed a mentor. I am fortunate to have found that mentor in Kathleen Huckabee.

The Honors College at Lone Star presents itself as an immense opportunity for me to truly exhibit the potential which I strive to exude. It provides not only convenience to my family and I, but reassurance that I can receive an honorary level of education just a few miles from home. As I traverse through high school, I always hold a subconscious idea of the future I wish to lead and the effort which it demands, but I never became discouraged by the years of education which I must accomplish. In fact, this factor only accelerates my ambition to excel in what several appear to be abandoning as of late: medicine.

No matter how stressed or upset I feel, every time I step into the Children's Hospital of Orange County those feelings all seem to melt away. Here out of all places I find so much life and energy. Even when things are a little difficult, my "buddies" inspire me to keep going. My time spent learning their likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and dreams drives me to try to make even the smallest difference in their lives and those of other

At the place where I grew up in Ethiopia, a college degree is a very precious thing that only those who are academically strong and lucky could acquire. Being a first college student to pursue a bachelor’s degree in my family and growing up in one of the undeveloped country, there have been many challenges that I had to overcome from elementary school to attending the University of Maryland College Park. That said, just like the true identity of a gold is determined by putting it in a glowing fire, I believe, the true passion of one’s self can only be revealed after overcoming many obstacles. Therefore, I believe the challenges that I had to go through have made me who I now am and aspired me to study medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

My love for medical didnt always start out this way.When i was elementary I started off wanting to pursue the dreams of being a teacher. I was always fascinated by the way teacher cared and teached.at the end of elementary i decided that being a teacher was not for me. As I entered middle school I join a choice program and got accepted to a middle school that had a medical program. Is this medical program at the middle school we learned about the basics of anatomy and physiology. I didn’t get to finish my middle school medical due to the fact that I wanted to skip a grade. I had failed a grade level in elementary and was always a grade level Behind . I refuse to let this make me graduate late so I decided to go to school that would help

“Call 911! We need help!” One bystander was shouting. I remember it vividly. A large

Growing up I dreamed of becoming a physician because of my family’s extensive medical history that has always kept us familiar with the hospital setting. Watching television shows such as House and Grey’s Anatomy glamourized the career in that it showed physicians who often made decisions independently of the patient and without patient consent. In the end, they were always right. This idea provided the basis of my thinking of how doctors operate in a hospital. Years later when I joined the healthcare field my experiences would change these initial impressions.

The first obstacle that I have chosen in the call to adventure. Odysseus is called to fight the battle of troy but has trouble dealing with the fact that he has to leave his wife and his newborn son. I relate to this because I will soon be graduating high school and moving to Pennsylvania to pursue the rest of my education (college – bachelors, masters). I know that I want to pursue a career in the medical field but in order to accomplish that goal, I have to leave. I know that this is where I need to go and I know that this is the best option for me, but I do not want to leave my home, my family, my ordinary world. I struggle dealing with the fact that I will be living half way across the country and living on my own without the safety net

When I entered Cedars-Sinai in the early fall, the weather was warm and the sky was bright. I remember walking straight to the location of the first Pre-Healthcare Volunteer Program meeting. When entering the room, I saw the gleaming faces of the new volunteers yet I could not find anyone that looked like me. Surely, there was no other dark brown and dark eyed young women, it was only me. I was the only person of Hispanic background. Immediately, I felt a sense of accomplishment knowing that I had gained acceptance to a competitive program and that I was proudly representing my people in the room. Yet, as the program progressed that sense of accomplishment vanished and melancholy replaced it. Although I was the only Hispanic in my cohort, I believed that I might find other Hispanic professionals in the hospital. On the contrary, I witnessed an extreme lack of diversity in the group of physicians that worked in the hospital and more specifically in the surgical floor.

Throughout the years I feel that I’ve had a number of valuable experiences, but none that have changed me as much as my experience volunteering at Children’s Hospital Colorado. I still vividly remember my first walking past the sliding glass doors of the pristine hospital on my very first day volunteering during the summer of 2012.

When I was a junior in high school I went through a major injury playing baseball, I tore my rotator cuff playing baseball and had to have surgery to repair it. Going through the process of getting it repaired I met a lot of individuals throughout the recovery process and one man stood out among there others. He made it a lot easier getting through the pain. Kevin Kennard a physical therapy assistant not only helped me out during my appointments but he would make the time throughout his day outside of work to help me get to my goals. That is when I knew that I wanted to go into the medical field, but I wasn’t for sure on what I wanted to do. Talking with my parents I have a lot of family members that went into nursing and they informed me about the careers my family had, and I decided that I wanted to be a nurse. When I graduated in 2007 I began my collegiate adventure at Northern Oklahoma College in Enid, Oklahoma I was ready

While it is obviously not the easiest road to travel on, I have already begun my journey into entering the medical field. For example, I am enrolled in my school’s Healthcare