REG at SFCCC (My Internship)—Blog Series 3 of 3
Pursuing a Career in Healthcare (Article 3)
After a fun run, we’ve reached the final article in this series, and I would like to do a few things before mentioning this piece’s topic. First, if any readers would like to check out more of my work, I’ll embed a link to my work with The Oberlin Review here. Also, I’m appreciative of my time with the Consortium thus far, and I’m incredibly thankful for the guidance and support of Beau Sanchez throughout my internship. With that out of the way, I would like to spend this piece outlining my journey in pursuing a career in healthcare.
It started when I was in elementary school and wanted to be a plastic surgeon. Looking back, the decision to pursue a career in plastic surgery was impulsive. When I was younger, I wanted to pursue a career that could make money and help people. Someone mentioned Plastic Surgery as an occupation in elementary school, and it stuck with me for years. It was only years later that I began to learn more about other careers that help people with good salaries. That’s likely the reason why a career as a Plastic Surgeon didn’t end up entirely sticking and led to my decision to not to pursue it as a career. It was only in high school I was able to access resources to pursue a career in healthcare. Before high school, there were very little classes and no programs in promoting a career in the medical field. Long story short, poverty and racism (among many other factors) did not make it easy for me to see myself in a healthcare position.
To help prepare me for a healthcare career, I took more science classes in high school and enrolled in AP Chemistry courses. Some of the other courses I took included Physics, Anatomy and Physiology, Biology, and Honors Chemistry. I also participated in the MedPREP program in high school. It was a professional readiness education program meant to prepare students for college-level studies in healthcare or medicine. During this program, I connected with different health professionals (many related to students attending the school, such as pharmacists, physicians, surgeons, and several more). We also received CPR training and Disaster Relief training throughout the program. Through the program, I engaged in roundtable talks with many healthcare professionals and witnessed live knee surgery. The journey was not always easy. I don’t mean academically demanding as rigorous academic work is almost a requirement in all aspects of pursuing a career in medicine. However, the mental toll of having an environment at a PWI (Primarily White Institution) is not something one can easily prepare to fight.
Attending a conservative PWI high school, the MedPREP program lacked interpersonal and medical racism concepts. Factors such as future debt from higher education, lack of access to black role models in healthcare, lack of access to decent healthcare due to poverty, and the mental toll of this were concerns I experienced. Many of my peers did not have any of these concerns. Other students in the MedPREP program had family members who were already in the healthcare industry and had money to pay for medical school. The MedPREP program failed to address these issues while I was in the program. Reflecting on my experience, the program did not contain a curriculum addressing anti-racism in medicine. It only reinforces how educationally inequitable my high school was. My point is that the program had its benefits, but the faults were indicative of a more significant issue in higher education and medicine.
Even the college application process was vastly different between myself and colleagues. Many of them had financial support from their parents that provided easier access to enrolling in higher education. I did not have this luxury and had to work rigorously to apply to various scholarship opportunities to fund my senior year. I cannot remember each scholarship I applied to; however, here are some of the most notable I do remember; the Jack Kent Cooke College Scholarship Program, the Gates Scholarship (for which I was a finalist), and the Questbridge National College Match. Some of my fears subsided when I had the opportunity to attend Oberlin College through Questbridge, and they paid for a large chunk of my tuition. Through the program, I can pay my way through school so long as I maintain good academic standing and work off a slight difference during the school year.
Oberlin has many differences from previous institutions I attended. The two most significant differences are the support networks available and the campus’s political climate. While they are not perfect (and I have written in-depth about Oberlin’s faults), I was able to get access to antidepressants, semi-consistent therapy, and a platform to voice many of my concerns with previous and current instances of injustice at Oberlin College. Oberlin also has a supportive community known as the Afrikan Heritage House, a designated safe space for the African diaspora residents and students. I’ve been living there for the past two years. It is by far where I feel the most supported and content on campus (unsurprisingly, because nearly all of the residents are Black). The college also put me in contact with the SFCCC through the Sophomore Practicum (SOAR). I also feel more supported working with healthcare professionals who prioritize combating racism and working to better equity with treatment between different groups.
However, the high school I attended and Oberlin have some similarities. Oberlin is also a PWI (the statistics showed the institution was 70% white as of my freshman year). Both institutions have and continue to uphold white supremacy elements just by their schools’ makeup alone (the fact one may be more well-meaning but equally white makes their differences negligible after a while).
During my time in college, I’ve discovered a deep passion and talent for writing, which led to my columnist position on the Oberlin Review. That passion led me to choose this series of blogs as my final project for my micro-internship. I hope that telling my stories with a mixture of research and personal experience will further advance and continue the conversation surrounding combating medical racism. Maybe these projects and future ones I continue to work on, such as Racial Justice work on Oberlin College’s Student Senate, will make a difference.
No matter what angle you tackle these issues from, there’s always more to do, and even the current systems we have in place are not perfect. Regardless of how any prospective student, who wants to make a difference, chooses to continue their career, there is no one-size-fits-all solution or approach. I failed Biology 100 my first year in college and took a break from STEM for a semester before getting an A in my introductory chemistry course. Furthermore, I went from that poor Bio 100 experience to some of my writing now being published on an official Health Center’s website before the end of my sophomore year. Even if I don’t ultimately pursue medical school, there is much work to do with volunteering, direct aid, and outreach to vulnerable communities or even seeking future employment with a Community Health Center.
After all the hardship I’ve encountered before and during college, I still managed to bounce back. I’d like to believe other young aspiring health professionals can do the same (especially if they have endured anything similar to what I’ve mentioned). The injustice my family, friends, and I have experienced over the years is not okay. The casual medical racism that Black people have to endure time and time again is not okay. However, it does place everything into perspective when reflecting on how far I and many others in my position have come. We will get closer to a better world so long as we remember what has happened and the end goal where future generations don’t need to be this resilient.
If you are a student looking to get into a healthcare career or just curious to know what programs can help, check out this resource I created during my micro-internship at SFCCC. It includes information on workforce resources, scholarships, and other opportunities to pursue medicine; please visit the following link if interested.