Both of my parents have graduate degrees in science, so I always assumed that was the path that I would go down. After deciding that clinical medicine (being a traditional doctor) wasn't the right path for me I looked for ways to combine my love for serving others with my problem solving mindset. Biomedical Engineering brings together all of these things and has a breadth that you may not find in other STEM fields. I look to three people as my key role models for my career choices: first my mom. She completed her PhD in Animal Science in a time that not many women were doing that, she put up with people who thought that she should have stayed home with her children and instead proved everyone wrong and excelled at both her education and her parenting. Second would be my first college math teacher, she was the first one to really look at me and say that I was selling myself short and could really do something that mattered in the world, if I put my mind to it. And finally, the first professor who looked at me and said that I wasn't the type of student who could finish a graduate degree, that I would run off and get married instead. I knew that I was going to prove him wrong, and I knew that I was going to follow in my moms footsteps, and make my teacher proud.