Resume

In eighth grade, I wanted to be a lawyer. I thought I was good at arguing (I wasn’t) and I had always been really interested in my social studies classes. Why not, right? Lawyers are smart, productive members of society, and they make pretty good money. Unfortunately though, I realized the following year that I wasn’t even remotely interested in law. I found politics annoying and tedious, so I drifted away from that idea.

Junior year rolled around, and I was a little distressed because I still had nothing that really interested me. I had been getting pretty comfortable with languages, having taken both Spanish and German the last two years, but that wasn’t something I thought I’d want to make a career out of. So when I scheduled my classes, I took an array of everything. I took AP Spanish, AP Psychology, Engineering, and Anatomy & Physiology (we’ll call it A&P), along with my regular classes. That’s where it sparked. I very quickly found out that I do not want to be an engineer. The class itself was enjoyable and interesting, but it wasn’t for me. Psychology and A&P however were for me. I had never been so intrigued by any subject as I was by those two. Weighing options and thinking about the implications, I decided by the end of the year that I wanted to be a doctor. I originally thought I should be a psychiatrist, but just like my JD, I drifted away from that idea too.

I got into the idea of surgery my senior year. From November to February, I got to shadow two bariatric surgeons at West Chester Hospital, which is a branch of UC Health. I got to go in two or three times each month and watch them work in the operating room. The administrators at my high school thought it was so cool that they actually let me skip a few days to go to the hospital. I got to see several gastric sleeve procedures, cholecystectomies, various hernia repairs, and a couple lipoma excisions, to name a few. And with that experience, I decided I want to be a surgeon.