I was crying in the middle of class registration, staring at a schedule full of Cellular Biology and General Chemistry courses I couldn’t bring myself to register for. Six months earlier, I would have been excited. Six months earlier, my dad was still alive.
A year ago, when this all started, I was a Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology major on the pre-med track. I loved school and loved the idea of being a doctor even more. I was a registered EMT and had straight A’s. My dad was my number one supporter and best friend. We called every day to catch up and talk about anything new that happened. He asked me every day how classes were and he told me about all the people he bragged to today about his daughter that was “going to be the best doctor they’d ever meet.” That’s who he was to me, the person that saw me for me and believed in me more than I believed in myself.Â
This call was different on that day though. It came between classes. My dad’s voice was different — strained, trying to be brave. He had another heart attack. The doctors gave him options — none of them good. He asked how long it would take me to become a doctor. Ten years, I told him. ‘I’ll be there,’ he promised. He told me to focus on my Gen Chem test that night. I bombed it — the worst score I’d ever gotten. I barely remember taking it. That was the beginning of everything unraveling.Â
My dad died in March of my freshman year. After the funeral, I didn’t go home for six months. I thought if I just kept going — kept taking pre-med classes, kept studying, kept pretending everything was fine — I could outrun the grief. I couldn’t. I found myself texting him every day, telling him about my classes and tests that I did well on. I couldn’t sleep without waking up crying. I was struggling to stay in the gym, which eventually led to me not even staying in my classes. My grades slowly dropped and my passion quickly left.Â
At this time I was in a lab that was researching cancer and antibiotics. When I would go to this lab, I would just be thinking “Why am I trying to find antibiotics when doctors couldn’t even save my dad.” Resentment grew for my pre-med classes. I felt anger towards the doctors that were taking care of my dad and anger towards healthcare in general. Everytime I was in my lab or my genetics class I would only be thinking about how we know all of this about health, but no one could save him. Sitting in genetics class, I’d stare at hereditary disease charts and think about heart disease running in my family. Every statistic felt like a countdown. I was miserable every day, but kept pushing and going — avoiding the grief.Â
Little did I know I wasn’t avoiding it. I was just in the anger stage of grieving. I was mad at science for failing him. Mad at doctors for not saving him. Mad at my dad for promising he’d be there when we both knew he might not be.
When fall semester started, I still was on the pre-med track, but had recently added Public Health as a double major. Due to having public health as a major now I took a required class called environmental justice. Our first unit was about the Flint, Michigan Water crisis. What caught my attention was how residents showed officials proof the water was contaminated, and nobody listened. For the first time in months, I felt that old spark. The one my dad always saw in me when I talked about helping people. Just not the way I’d always imagined. After months of this class I learned more and more how policies and laws helped so many communities. A project we did with each unit was creating a policy on human injustice, environmental injustice, or just issues that needed to be fixed. I would stay up until 1 am working on this, not because I put it off, but because I cared. I loved the process of it all. This is when I started questioning everything. I looked into law and talked to my teacher more about what I could do to help people through policies.Â
Registration day came around and I still hadn’t decided what to do, but when I looked at my schedule I just started crying. I knew I was unhappy. It was full of cellular biology and chemistry. This is when I knew I couldn’t do pre-med. Immediate panic filled up my whole body. I have always wanted to be a doctor and now I was lost. I was grieving another death — the death of future-doctor me, the version my dad had bragged about to everyone he knew. But I wasn’t actually lost. I knew deep down that I still wanted to help people, to be the voices they didn’t have. So the day of registration I switched all my classes to pre-law and only public health classes. I wasn’t sure if this was the right call, but it felt like the first time since my dad passed that I was happy. I hit the register button and I was expecting guilt and anxiety to hit me, but instead I was smiling. I was smiling, something I forgot I could do. I was so happy and relieved which is when I knew I had found my spark again. All that ran through my head was my dad telling me “do what makes you happy not what makes others happy.”Â
For once, I listened to my dad. My dad won’t see me graduate law school or argue my first case. But he saw the part that mattered — the part of me that wanted to help people, however that looked. Pre-med or pre-law, doctor or lawyer, he just wanted me to find my spark again. I’m getting there, Dad. I’m getting there.