Getting In
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How Your Tough Pre-Medical Experiences Will Serve You Well
For many students, the journey to medical school comes with a story of challenges and obstacles. But don’t think that the circumstances that arise are all for nothing. by Sheryl Recinos 18 | PREMEDLIFE.COM | September/October 2020
he day that I received my medical school diploma in the mail, I cried. I held it up as a badge of honor; proof that people like me could overcome the impossible and become who we were meant to be. Not only was I the first physician in my family, but I was coming to understand the role that childhood trauma had paid in my unrelenting desire to pursue a career in medicine and the impact it would have on patients during my training and my career. It was no easy feat; I entered a Caribbean medical school at 31 years old, tugging along my husband and three school-aged kids as we journeyed to a new country. I gave up my well-paying high school science teaching career and placed my family in extreme poverty and uncertainty as the following four years unfolded. I was afraid throughout my studies that something would happen and my dream would dissolve. I developed an extreme test anxiety that rose up in waves of panic during exams, and almost cost me my chance. And I held many jobs while in school, in order to help keep a roof over our heads and food in my kid’s bellies. When I started medical school, I was afraid to speak my truth. I didn’t realize the power in whom I’d been and who I was becoming. I was too focused on just getting in, and I didn’t want to take risks. I was afraid to talk about my early experiences growing up in a severely dysfunctional household. I didn’t want to tell people that my mother had suffered from mental illness and that my father had raised me and my siblings after she left. I also didn’t want to talk about my own struggles, first as a runaway teen, then as a foster child, and later, as an incarcerated youth when my own father pressed charges against me at 13 for stealing money from him when I ran away. At 16, when I left for good and ended up on the streets of Hollywood for several years, I felt like I was solely responsible. I blamed myself for my erroneous mistakes in my teen years, and I had accepted the story that I’d been told throughout my upbringing and adult years. I had made those mistakes. I had shamed the family. I was lucky that they forgave me. Only, that’s not the whole story. I wasn’t allowed to discuss where I’d been or what challenges I’d encountered. In exchange,
