Once upon a time
I lived in the Honors Residential College, a residence hall at Virginia Tech. It was fall 2014, and I was asked by the professor that lives in the community with us, Dr. K, to be in the President's Box at a VT football game so I could schmooze with all the fancy donors and impress them with my honors student powers. I was super nervous to be there because I didn't know what to say to any of the important people, but then one lady stood next to me and commented on the game, which was going poorly. She was really easy to talk to and I found out her name was Ennis McCrery. She was so nice and put me quite at ease. After the game I wanted to reach out to her. I was nervous to email her but I was soon happy I did, because she said she had been hoping to see me again too! We got coffee at Deets a couple weeks later, and in the course of our conversation she asked me a lot of questions about my dreams. I told her I want to be a doctor, and I'm particularly interested in medicine in sub-saharan Africa. Since working with the non-profit Invisible Children, which provides aid to war-torn central African nations, I have felt connected to that part of the world and its people. She thought those were great dreams and wanted to be part of making them happen. She told me to go meet Dr. Redican, a professor in the masters of public health program. I emailed him and met him in his office. We talked about medical school, the MCAT, and all sorts of things. Just like Ennis, he demonstrated total belief in my goals and wanted to help- he told me I had to go to Malawi. Malawi is special: it is known as the "Warm Heart of Africa." It has the low-resource conditions of many sub-Saharan nations but without the political tensions or terrorism that many countries suffer. It is a notoriously welcoming and positive place, perfect for me to see how low-resource health works and if it's right for me. Dr. Redican also connected me with a Malawian MPH student at VT, Jones, who talked with me about hospitals in Malawi and also encouraged me to get there and follow my dreams. That is why in the spring of 2015, I took special notice of a poster I saw at an engineering abroad fair. It was for Global Air, a low-resource respirator designed by students as part of PMDI. I asked the students presenting about their work and how to contact the lab director. I met Dr. Muelenaer in August when I was back at school for RA training. After sitting in on the lab meeting and a conversation with Dr. Muelenaer, he told me he wanted two things:
1. To get me to Malawi summer 2016 with a project I cared about.
2. To help me get into medical school
This trip represents the care all of these people have showed for me and goes above and beyond Dr. Muelenaer's first goal. My mentors like Dr. Kaufman, Ennis, Dr. Redican, Jones, Dr. Muelenaer, and the other members of PMDI to name a few, have put so much care into helping me get to Malawi and find out how I can serve the world. I feel very blessed by all of them. So that is why I'm flying to Malawi tomorrow, and why it is important to me, and why it is exactly where I need to be for the next 4 weeks. So thank you to them especially, but also for anyone reading this for obviously caring enough about me to wonder why the heck I'm going to Africa. I hope I can invest and believe in people as much as all of these people have for me. To Malawi we go!
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