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Growing up, I was fortunate enough to be a foster-sister to some quite a variety of kids. When they joined my family I thought all I was getting new sisters and brothers, but I gained much more than that. In witnessing their struggles in coping with past physical and mental abuses, I found my life path. I felt so helpless at the time, so I decided to pursue a career where I could offer some help to children like these: medicine. It sounded so simple, just take all the science related classes in school, make good grades, and the path would be open. And I did all that. I was one of the valedictorians of my high school, and I received my bachelor of science in biology with departmental honors at the University of Kentucky. But my life made a massive u-turn the last semester of college. I took the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) and did well on it. I applied to several medical schools, and even got a few interviews, but I did not get accepted. While this was discouraging, the great part about it was that I had wonderful opportunity arise elsewhere. I began working on an undergraduate research project with a new faculty member in the biology department as a senior in college. And when I completed my final year of school, the professor I worked for was so impressed with my work that he hired me, right out of school, as his full time laboratory technician. I was so caught up in going to medical school that I didn't see how much I truly enjoyed the research I was doing until after I didn't get in! Now, I do research on catfish and trout, trying to discover the
roles that hormones play in their bodies, and the pathways those
hormones use to influence different organ systems. I feel that I
have learned more in the laboratory that I did in the classroom,
and I get to apply what I did learn in the classroom to better help
me understand what is happening in my experiments. While my desire
to get into medical school was the drive that helped me make it
through high school and college, ultimately it was my failure to
get accepted that led me to my true life calling: research.
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