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Mission to Med School

May 25, 2012 at 9:24 AM ET by Ronnie Cho
Summary: 
Sherita Black's two mentors are helping direct her toward her dream job as a physician.

“Tales of Excellence, Achievement and Mentorship” or “TEAM” is a weekly series partnered with StudentMentor.org where we feature college students and young Americans from diverse backgrounds across the country who are using mentorships to move their career and educational goals forward. You will hear in their own words how mentors have helped them succeed and transform into the leaders of tomorrow.

Through StudentMentor.org, college students can conveniently find and collaborate with mentors to successfully graduate from college and embark on their desired careers.

Sherita knew her career goal was to become a physician. The challenge was navigating her way through undergraduate classes and then medical school admissions to get on track to make that goal a reality. With the help of several mentors with advice on different things from financial aid to med school admissions exams Sherita is on her way to achieving her goal with more confidence than she could have ever imagined.

My name is Sherita Black and I am a junior majoring in Biological Science. My educational goal is to get a MD. My career goal is to become a physician. With this I hope to use my skills as a physician to help provide medical care where it is not readily available within the US as well as abroad.

One challenge I have faced while going to school has been being the first in my family to go to college. I’ve been able to navigate through my undergrad; however, I thought that I needed more hands on guidance when it came to medical school admissions. The only people who I know that are in college are around my age, so I needed help connecting with people who were ahead of me since I was clueless to what I need to do to get to the next step of getting into medical school. My second challenge has been financial. My immediate family consists of my mother and myself, and from my senior year of high school until recently my mother has been unemployed. I found it difficult to cope with the changes of being a full-time college student, and worrying about the uncertainty of what was going to happen in the days to come.

For my mentorship I decided that I wanted to have two different types. One of my mentors being a physician. My second mentor being a medical student. However, I ended up with two physicians who have been open to answering any of my questions and providing me with really great advice. StudentMentor.org has provided a platform for me to interact with people who are not within my immediate community. For me it would be terrifying to just walk up to a physician and ask them questions because there is an air of uncertainty of how they will respond. So it is really great to have people contact you about wanting to help you with your goals, and being willing to help you out because of their desires to help provide guidance to others.

I would absolutely recommend StudentMentor.org to others, in fact, I have already. I’ve found my mentors to be extremely helpful. My mentors are open to answering any questions that I have, which as I stated are opportunities I would not have had otherwise since I do not know anyone in the medical field or in medical school. I would also recommend StudentMentor.org because you start to form a relationship where your mentors know you well enough to tailor their advice to you, instead of more general advice. Also, these mentors are people who want to help out because it what they want. They are not giving advice and guidance because they are getting paid or gaining some other type of benefit from it beside know they helped someone.

Check out previous TEAM blog posts:


Ronnie Cho is an Associate Director in the Office of Public Engagement.