1. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I grew up in Rutherfordton, North Carolina which is a small and rural town halfway between Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina. I obtained my undergraduate degree in biochemistry from Converse College, a small women’s college in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I graduated in three years and decided to take a gap year in order to take the MCAT and apply to medical school for entry in 2019. During my gap year, I am working as a biomedical research fellow at the National Cancer Institute within the National Institutes of Health. I will spend this year determining if novel genetic variants in the regulator of telomere elongation helicase 1 gene (RTEL1) will result in alternative isoforms of the protein. I will then analyze the resulting functional changes or changes in gene expression of these isoforms using RNA sequencing from patient-derived samples. I started about two weeks ago and can’t wait to spend my gap year working for the NIH.

2. Who was your favorite teacher in school and how did he or she impact you? My favorite professor in college was my biochemistry professor, Dr. Will Case. He set high expectations for all of his students but didn’t hesitate to help us along the way. His office door was always open and he was always willing to answer any question about chemistry. He pushed me to challenge myself in the lab and encouraged us to evolve in our way(s) of thinking, studying, and learning. Not all of these things were verbally expressed but were always made known because he was a leader by example and passionate about teaching.

3. When did you first decide you wanted to become a doctor and why? I decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was in eighth grade after watching the movie “My Sister’s Keeper” based on Jodi Picoult’s novel. I didn’t (and still don’t) read a lot for pleasure but after seeing the movie, I was excited to read the book. It is still one of my favorite books. The novel follows Anna, who is the younger sister to Kate, a girl who has lived her whole life with leukemia. Anna was conceived and genetically modified in order to be a perfect match for her sister. Anna was born with no choice but to save her sister’s life. As they both grow older, Kate wants to pass away gently and doesn’t want Anna to bear the burden of saving her life any longer. So the book follows the process of Anna being medically emancipated from her parents, while still under the age of thirteen. After being so engulfed in this story for weeks, I became passionate about helping kids with cancer. I used my limited medical vocabulary to put together my dream job, a pediatric oncologist. Little did I know that was a real profession but that’s when my passion for medicine began.

4. What area of medicine are you interested in? For a long time I was interested in becoming a pediatric oncologist, as previously stated. It wasn’t until about a year and half ago that I decided to change my mind. I spent around 75 hours shadowing a pediatric surgeon and over the course of a few months, fell in love with that field of medicine. It was always something different. Shortly after shadowing the pediatric surgeon, I interviewed a pediatric oncologist and knew I needed to work in a field that was a little more positive than oncology. My decision to pursue pediatric surgery was solidified.

5. What’s the coolest experience you’ve had so far on your premedical journey? The coolest experience I’ve had so far was actually being able to shadow my own sister’s ankle surgery. We shared the same orthopaedic doctor who had performed my ankle surgery a few months prior. With my sister’s permission, I asked to our doctor if I could join him in the operating room on the day of my sister’s surgery and to my surprise, he said yes but also invited me to come back anytime I wanted. As a result, I was able to gross my sister out with details about her surgery and see a wide variety of other orthopaedic surgeries.

6. What is your favorite book? My favorite book is “My Sister’s Keeper” by Jodi Picoult! See question three for more details. 🙂

7. Tell us one thing interesting about you that most people don’t know. I am a fraternal twin! My twin sister and I are very different but very close. She is studying marketing and communications. The first time we were ever separated for more than a week was when we went to college. We have a younger sister as well, so sometimes we claim to be “triplet want-to-be’s.”

8. If you couldn’t be a doctor, what would you want to do? If I couldn’t be a medical doctor, I would probably want to pursue a Ph.D in some sort of biomedical science and become a college professor. Or I’d pursue a Master’s in Public Health and travel the world in order to help with several different health crises.

9. What has been your biggest obstacle as a premed and how did you (or are you) overcome it? My biggest obstacle as a premed was actually being able to pay for my undergraduate degree. I grew up in a single parent home, so money was always tight. The only reason I was able to afford my first year of college was because of scholarships, grants, and a fair amount of insurance money set aside from a car accident that wasn’t my fault. Halfway through my freshman year of college I noticed I had no idea how I was going to pay for the rest of my college career, so I got a job as a Pharmacy Technician, made a plan to graduate in three years while commuting to school in order to make obtaining my degree less costly. Working 25 hours a week was hard to juggle with my demanding school work and sometimes took a small toll on some of my grades, but I kept pushing. The summer before my third and final year of college, I was awarded a $20,000 scholarship by the National Institutes of Health with the expectation I would work for the NIH for one year in return. This scholarship paid all of my tuition, fees, and expenses for living off-campus. I will never be able to express how much gratitude I have for receiving this scholarship. It gave me the ability to quit my job as a pharmacy technician, focus on my school work, and graduate from college debt-free.

10. What do you like most about PreMed STAR? I love the format of PreMed STAR’s personal profile pages and how easy it is to download and print our profile in a professional format. I will be sending my profile and printing off my portfolio to give my possible letter of recommendation writers.

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