I was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina on August 17th, 2000. In the first couple of years, I lived in a small trailer in Hillsboro with my mother and father. Not too long after that my brother Pedro was born in 2002, and eventually, it became too overcrowded for us to live in there. So we moved into an apartment complex called Kingswood Apartments. Although we had a lot more space, the community around us was not so great. My half brother Ruben took part of a gang while he was in high school. During this time, Pedro and I were still in elementary, and we had no idea what the world has to offer beyond violence. Thankfully, the school we attended, Frank Porter Graham, had amazing and loving teachers that refrained us from taking the wrong path because they made us want to learn. Towards the end of fifth grade, I went on a school trip to Labcorps, and the things I saw there changed my life. I knew in that moment, that I have the potential to make an an impact for the greater good. I worked harder in school, and through the struggles and hardships, I managed to get out of the special needs program. The only reason they put me in the special needs program in the first place was because of my hearing loss. After that, in middle school, I stopped wearing my hearing aids which was very dumbfounded of me. I thought that because I am no longer in the program, I don’t need to wear these “stupid” hearing aids. I started the year poorly, and that’s when I realized that I needed them. I realized that people do not care about them as much as I thought they would. I realized that without them, I can not learn. Since then, I’ve been wearing hearing aids without the feeling of embarrassment. In my freshman year of high school, I began to read a lot about science, and during my spare time, I watched a show called ER. That’s when I became heavily interested in the field of medicine. I wondered about how we are able to create such medicine that we didn’t have not too long ago. A couple of decades ago, people with HIV and AIDS were expected to die soon, but now, thanks to the advanced treatments, they live normally. In addition, I was and still am a big fan of the history of World War Two. Specifically, the experiments that the Nazi party conducted against the prisoners. At first, I was disgusted every time I looked at the pictures, but now I see a different point of view. Despite the inhumane methods they practiced on their subjects, they pushed medical science further. They did not push medical science because they found anything remotely useful. They pushed medical science by bringing attention to the question of “when is an experiment humane or not.” As a person who loves the internet, it breaks my heart to see videos of people using treatments that have not been approved by the appropriate commission because of their ignorance. For example, a man wanted to have blue eyes, and decided to have laser eye surgery, and weeks later, he went blind. He did not know any of the major risks involved, and maybe, if he was told what the risks are, he probably would have made a different choice. This is why I am interested in medicine because I want patients to be able to make the best choice they can by letting them know what the risks are.
David now attends UNC-Chapel Hill as an undergraduate student.
Photos…
