About Me

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About:



I was born in Dallas, Texas. My mother, Mandy, raised me on her own for nearly a decade and taught me the importance of working hard and being diligent. I applied her teachings to my academic and extracurricular endeavors, and continue to do so to this day.

In addition to school, I am an officer for FACE AIDS, volunteer as a surgical technologist at a hospital, and work in a neurobiology research lab on campus. The major thing I have learned about myself in college: there are very few limits, and everything I do can help. Every time I raise two dollars at the FACE AIDS table, I know that the donation is helping to prevent the spread of AIDS from a mother to her child. As a surgical tech, I love that I can really comfort a patient and their family as they are wheeled back to surgery. As a lab assistant, I know that every hour I work is one extra hour in which the neurobiologist can be one hour more productive.

As a Plan II Honors major and a premedical student, I hope to enter medical school. My experience with clinically ill patients has proven that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

In my free time, I play music, play racquetball and basketball, ride my bike, cook, and spend time with my friends.

Why I Ride

In my time working at the hospital, I have encountered many ill patients, the most memorable of which were those diagnosed with cancer.

One time, I was told to go retrieve a patient from the cancer floor for her surgery to remove a metastatic mass in her head. I went to her room, made sure she was ready, and rolled her to the elevator. As I took her from her family, her granddaughter grabbed me by the arm and asked me my name.

She then thanked me for the way I handled the situation and acted towards their family. It felt really good knowing that I could make a difference, that I could make them a little more comfortable, as I took their grandmother back to the OR. I hope that I can be just as comforting to the many patients I will reach out to through the Texas 4000.

The importance of reaching out to patients and their families really hit home last summer. Just a month after I began to see a multitude of cancer patients at the hospital, our family was informed that my mom had cancer.

I have a particularly close relationship with my mom. For most of my childhood she raised me alone, and we spent every moment she was out of work doing things together. I’ve learned from her struggles and apply the lessons she taught me to everything. I can honestly say that I feel closer to her than to anyone else. The possibility of losing her was terrifying. She and my stepdad had been busy buying a new house, setting up their lives through retirement together. It took several painful months until we found out that her surgery had, as far as the oncologist could tell, removed all traces of cancer from her body. She has gone back for scans every several months, and every time she does I feel a sense of anxious urgency waiting for her results.

I have seen how cancer affects people first hand. It doesn’t just hurt the person who is diagnosed with the disease–it hurts everyone who loves them. I have been a cancer patient’s relative, and I have been a healthcare provider for cancer patients. I have seen its worst, but also developed a sense of urgency and responsibility to help fight the disease in any way I can. When I am older, I hope to help the patients as their doctor. Right now, I want to help them by taking part in the Texas 4000.