About Me
Sometimes people see something in you that you haven’t yet noticed about yourself. Throughout my childhood, people would say that I should become a doctor. As a child, I thought they must be mistaken. My sentiment was, “Thanks for the compliment…. But as a princess, I’m next in line to take the throne.” Surely, I wasn’t supposed to be a doctor and a princess.
It was not until my freshman year of high school that I would discover my longing for serving others (and realize that I wasn’t a real princess). I was enrolled in AP Human Geography. The class intrigued me because I was learning about so many different cultures, peoples, and environments. I remember being captivated by our discussions about humanitarian crises and medically underprivileged populations. This spawned my interest in a healthcare career in which I could care for medically underserved people.
The next year, I began learning Spanish at my high school. I fell in love with the language. I took every project as an opportunity to show my dedication to learning the language. I even committed to learning Spanish outside of the classroom by using online tutorials and watching Spanish television shows.
The following summer, I had the pleasure of serving my community through internships and volunteer work at two different locations. At First Steps of Greenville, I realized the importance of health and nutrition as it relates to child development. This spurred my pursuit of a healthcare career.
While interning at Primrose School, I met a shy child who only spoke a few words in English. He was new to the class, and he had trouble communicating with the other children. When he realized that I could understand him, his face lit up. It felt amazing to be able to help him feel included by overcoming the language barrier. From this experience, I realized the power of language and the many connections we can make when we use it effectively. This inspired my zeal to continue studying Spanish in college. I wanted to learn the Spanish language in order to communicate with and serve my future patients.
To accommodate my interest in both Spanish and the healthcare field, I was planning to pursue double majors in Spanish and Health Science. Then I came across Clemson’s unique Language and International Health program. As I read about the program, it was as if the program was tailored specifically for me. The skies above me parted and a ray of sunlight set me aglow. Yes! This is it! My passion and my purpose could achieve marital bliss at last. I was overjoyed about the program, to say the least.
Throughout my college career, I continued to devote myself to learning Spanish and developing a deeper understanding of the needs of underserved communities, both inside and outside of the classroom. The summer of my freshman year, I traveled to Bocas Del Toro, Panama, where I interned with Volunteers Around the World. Each day, I served locals on different island communities that were otherwise isolated from the mainland. I completed patient intakes in Spanish, took vital signs, shadowed the doctors and pharmacists, and helped with patient data collection. One day, I witnessed a young child whose father had brought him to the clinic. His son, no more than 10 years old, was weak and in a lot of pain. The little boy’s father was asking us for medicine, but our small mobile clinic didn’t have what they needed. The doctor urged him to take his child to the hospital on the mainland. When I realized that no one on the island owned a motorized boat, I realized how great of a journey the doctor was asking him to make. This man would have to physically row his sick child to the mainland to a hospital that closed in the evenings and wasn’t even open on the weekends. My heart wrenched at the thought that this young child was suffering and might not get the care he needed because of something as trivial as a boat. It’s not fair, I thought. This experience emboldened my passion to serve the medically underprivileged. I vowed that I would devote my life to preventing needless suffering.
During the spring semester of my junior year, I had the amazing opportunity to study abroad. I selected the program in Argentina as my first choice, seemingly resolute in my dedication to furthering my understanding of medically underserved populations. But in all honesty, it had been some time since the audacious vow I’d made in Panama, and I was starting to get cold feet. Could I really do this?, I wondered. I needed to see what future me was up against. About a month after arriving in Córdoba, Argentina, I was placed in an internship at a small clinic just a few minutes away from my host family’s house. I shadowed a brilliant pediatrician who was battling the emerging dengue outbreak with the insufficient resources from the underfunded and overcrowded clinic. It was a privilege to see her in action. She maneuvered complex ethical decisions constantly. Somehow, she knew when to spend a few extra minutes talking to a new mother, knowing there was a crowd of restless patients waiting to be seen, or when a child was sick enough to give the complete dose of a medication rather than a smaller ration. She showed me what it meant to be an excellent physician in a low-resource environment. I desired to master this art one day. When I left Argentina, I was sure of my purpose.
Now, I’m in my final year of undergraduate studies. Looking back on my journey, I realized one of the most important things that kept me going, even when things got tough, was service. It reminds me of my why. It keeps the fire of passion and purpose in my heart going, even when burnout tries to snuff it out. This is why I believe that serving others is a fundamental part of life. In the future, I hope to serve members of the Spanish-speaking community as a Family Care Physician. My dream would be to provide free healthcare to those in need and help uplift underserved communities by contributing to advances in public health.
Studying at Clemson will help me achieve my dreams one day. I am so grateful to be a Language & International Health major. I can only imagine what the future holds.