- Medicine has touched my family's life
in a lot of different ways.
My dad is a hospital administrator
at a hospital outside Philadelphia.
My sister kind of trail blazed
and is a physician herself.
All of our family centers
around medicine around my mom
and how it's impacted
us through my mother.
She was presenting with
neurological symptoms
and no one really quite
knew what the diagnosis was
or why she was having
the symptoms she was.
She would spend months in the
hospital and then come home.
They eventually settled on
multiple sclerosis, or MS.
That didn't quite fit the bill.
It wasn't until her neurologist,
who's been a very close family friend,
designed the novel
blood test for a related
kind of cousin disease of MS
called neuromyelitis optica, or NMO.
She was correctly diagnosed and now
she's being correctly treated.
Medicine and medical research
has transformed our family life.
The reason I came to Pen State is because
it's got a big school atmosphere
and it's a world class
research institution.
We get hundreds of millions
of dollars in funding
that a smaller liberal arts college
wouldn't necessarily have.
I initially wanted the swimming college.
I was interested in medicine kind of.
I wasn't too set on the
whole science pathway.
I really wanted to be a varsity swimmer.
I was looking for a school that was
strong in academics that would prepare me
for my future career, but
would also allow me to swim.
I ended up thinking it's okay
if I don't swim in college.
I want to pursue a career in
science and prepare myself
the best that I can to lead the career
and the life that I want to live.
