Harvard Medical School Student
1997 Madera High Graduate

"Work hard, dream big.  Madera High believed in me and always encouraged me to learn more and set high goals."

Throughout my life, most of the people I have met have been dismayed at my goal to become a physician because of my background.  They find it too good to believe because my parents neither speak English nor are educated.  Even more surprising is that, in fact, my background is the basis of my motivation.  My parents, growing up inMexico, never had the opportunity to acquire more than a third-grade education.  They have told me all my life, “If you don’t work hard in school, you’re going to end up working in the hot sun like we do.”  Starting in junior high school, I worked in the grape fields to buy my own clothes for school.  Doing farm work at this age led me to the realization that education was the best way for me to ensure a different life.

Education was very important to me from a young age.  I was my junior high school’s co-valedictorian and was also among the “top ten students” in my graduating class of 710 at Madera High School.  As a U.C. Regents and Gates Millennium Scholar, I developed this interest in medicine as a Biological Sciences major at the University of California, Davis.  In addition to volunteering in my community and at my school, I also worked in an antibody-engineering research lab.  This environment provided me with an opportunity to further understand the scientific process that produced the knowledge I was acquiring from the textbooks.

Having completed my third year at Harvard, I will take a year off from medical school to do translational research as a Howard Hughes-National Institutes of Health Research Scholar.  I will be doing tissue engineering research in a lab that's part of the National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal & Skin Diseases.  After immersing myself in such a translational research environment, participating in projects within the Cartilage Biology and Orthopedics branch to address questions that are intellectually interesting to me and critically important to patients, I will be better equipped for a future career in academic medicine and providing better care for patients I may never even meet personally.  I plan to return and practice medicine in California after completing my medical training.

I have recently been selected as the 2006 student honoree by the Academy of Achievement.  I will have the opportunity to meet world leaders at an International Achievement Summit later this year.  For more information please check out the following site:
             http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/pagegen/newsletter/2005/index.html