1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. 
My name is Patricio Ruano. Right now I’m 18 years old and I’m a freshman majoring in Biology ang minoring in Global Studies at California State University Channel Islands. I’m the first in my family to go to a higher education and that can sometimes be a struggle for me. My job right now is to mentor high school freshmen who were also in my position. I go to a local high school twice a week with premade lesson plans and agendas I made myself built around college life and STEM education in general to inspire these students to follow my path and hopefully get them to get a stronger start than I got. When I’m not traveling all over my campus for club meetings or exploring study spots, I do triathlons with my school’s triathlon/cross country club, and without almost drowning, nearly falling off my bike and losing my breath every other week I probably would have lost my mind several times over by now haha. Before I was the competitive college student my friends know me as now, I didn’t take schooling seriously which I regret. For high school, I went to STEM Academy of Hollywood, which offered a medical or engineering pathway for all four years. The only classes I really tried in were these medical electives where I was exposed to the world of biomedicine. By the end of high school, I only had a 2.7 GPA. I remember the moment I actually enjoyed being competitive was for my senior capstone project. We had to come up with a question where the “answer couldn’t come up if you Googled it”. While everyone did simple experiments such as “Do Hot Cheetos increase heart rate” I decided to try something more difficult testing if religious teenagers vs. atheist teenagers are more or less stressed based on cortisol hormone levels. My “study” took 4 months to complete including statistical analyses and required me to stay after school every day for over three hours, but I unexpectedly enjoyed it. I liked the work that I put in, and I felt proud of what I was doing even though it was probably very basic compared to actual research studies. If you have more questions about it feel free to contact me! Once I got to college everything changed. I tried as hard as I could to get high grades in my classes and planned out what I need to do in the next four years to get into medical school. I like to think that college was a gear switch for me. My mentality changed and my outlook on everything I do changed as well. It can be a struggle to go through this without anyone in my immediate or extended family trying something like this, but I will try my best and I will do it.

2. Who was your favorite teacher in school and how did he or she impact you?
My principles of microbiology professor told me something recently when I visited his office hours that will stick to me. I noticed that in the past couple of weeks I haven’t had time to spend with my friends or anyone other than a textbook and my fish in my dorm. I asked him “When you were in your first two years, did you ever hang out with your friends during the week or anything like that or did you just kind of go from building to building all day and working”. He’s relatively young for a professor, only 28 years old, and he also went to my University for his undergrad as well. I felt like he would be the best person to ask something like this rather than someone who was a freshman 30 years ago. He told me this, “Yeah, I had my friends, but I knew what was more important. During the week I almost wouldn’t talk to anyone. I locked myself down and kept it that was until everything I needed to do was done. And yeah, I was invited by my friends like ‘hey Michael come with us to this house party you need to destress’ but no, I wasn’t done yet. Work hard, play hard. But only play once all your work is done. Those people who are getting over 95% on my exams? They do that too. And those people who go out every day and say ‘hey screw that exam’, they’re the ones who come here at the end of the semester begging for a curve. You need to keep your head on straight and keep motivated while surrounding yourself with people who are the same. All it takes is one or two people who are only half set and you’re screwed up. Keep working hard and believe me when I say that you’ll regret it so much more if you do end up going to that party over studying for that Calc exam”. I felt reassured that I wasn’t letting myself get off balanced by school. I needed that boost at the time.

3. When did you first decide you wanted to become a doctor and why? 
I honestly don’t feel the same as when I’m in a hospital. Whether its for volunteering, an internship, or a visit to the emergency room when my friend cut his hand open on our model Cessna plane. It started in high school when I got my first volunteering position at Kaiser Permanente. I met a multitude of people who I talked to while waiting for their family members to pick them up. I remember their smiles, the way they thanked me for making their day brighter, when though they shouldn’t have. I was just a volunteer. Each doctor I passed in the halls looked like the most amazing person to me. I visited the NICU, orthopedic surgery, the ICU, oncology, as many areas of the hospital as I could while I was discharging patients. Each visit I thought, “These people are alive because of someone. I want to be that someone one day”. I volunteered every other day for 4 hours a day after school for a semester. Each day I left I felt tired, but happy. These experiences helped me know I want to be a doctor, because nothing else will leave me with the same feeling. I want to be the healer and the reason that someone is leaving a hospital as healthy as they can be. It’s the only calling I felt, I need to do this.

4. What area of medicine are you interested in?
If you were to ask me to choose a specialty right now, I would say either family medicine or emergency medicine. Family medicine because I like the idea of staying with a certain person or group of people for a long period of time and actually getting to know them. I have a mentor who is a family medicine doctor as well, and hearing about what he does daily really interests me. Emergency medicine would be because I already enjoy working under pressure and being one of the first to assist someone. As said before, my friend cut his hand open on our model Cessna. This happened in class. The cut was deeper than his skin, and you could see the white tendons on the back of his hand. Blood was spilling everywhere and the whole class was in shock. He himself grew pale and was close to passing out. Even though its basic first aid, I was the one that quickly stopped bleeding, cleaned and closed the cut using hydrogen peroxide spray, pressure and butterfly closures. When I took my friend to the hospital to get sutures, I looked closely as the physician applied the anesthetic and stitched his hand closed.

5. What’s the coolest experience you’ve had so far on your premedical journey?
By far the coolest thing so far was attending the AMSA convention in Washington DC. It was my first real exposure to a large crowd of people who are just like me. I met a whole lot of cool people who were both practicing and aspiring doctors. Nothing that I’ve done so far will compare to what I learned about how to become a doctor while at the convention.

6. What is your favorite book? 
I really like “The Stand” by Stephen King. Its this book about a viral disease that wipes out the entire human race except for a few who are naturally resistant to the virus. The book goes over how society had crashed and the survivors are thrown in a world with no rules other than their own morality. I’m only 2/3 of the way done, but I’m still super hooked to it.

7. Tell us one thing interesting about you that most people don’t know.
I was part of my high school’s first cross country team that made it to CIF competitions, it required me to run around 8 miles a day everyday but it was worth saying that I was part of the first group of people that made it past league competitions.

8. If you couldn’t be a doctor, what would you want to do?
I’ve thought about plan B’s. I guess the main one for me would be to try and teach at my old high school. I want to teach there before I die, hopefully after a retire as a physician. I would want to specifically teach there because the school as a whole has helped me and supported me so much that I want to give back directly.

9. What has been your biggest obstacle as a premed and how did you (or are you) overcome it?
My dad is a diabetic, but also an alcoholic. Once he gets a taste of any form of alcohol, he won’t stop. There were time periods where he would be drunk for months at a time, only coming home in the dead of night passing out on the couch. Once he woke up he would go out and do it again. This left my mom and I struggling both emotionally and financially. We would have to go into our savings accounts to pay for rent, and food became scarce. Once I lost 10 pounds in 3 weeks. It was really hard to overcome, since I was still living at home during high school, only moving out recently for college. To get over this, I just avoided it. I stayed at school as late as I could to work on my senior project, or go to practices, or volunteer at the hospital. These outlets for me let me take my mind off of the struggles I was going through and straightened me back onto the path I wanted to complete. When college came, I moved out and most of the problems went away. When I’m at school, I try not to think about back home. It makes me off focus, worrying about what could be happening without me there.

10. What do you like most about PreMed STAR?
Since my university doesn’t have many premed students, PreMed STAR is one of the only outlets I have to be exposed to other students with the same goals as me. Without it, I would only know at most 5 pre med students. But with it, I’m able to connect with tens or hundreds.

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