Morgan's Story

Interviewer: So I know you have talked about your time during the pandemic and there's been a lot of media about what's happened to young people during the pandemic. How was the pandemic for you when everything shut down?

Morgan: It was right before my junior year softball season, and really all I was thinking about was missing out on that important season and one of my favorite things to do. I was kind of separated from some people I was with at the time, and I ended up reconnecting with my childhood best friends, and it was easy to go to a dog park with them six feet apart. When we were talking, I realized that they were all really focused on what they wanted to do in college. And we just seemed to get along like we were in middle school again. We spent the whole summer together, again, senior year when everything the restrictions lifted a little bit.

I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I looked at a new list of 10 colleges every week, just seeing the places they were applying and everything they wanted to do. Like, my best friend is in a doctorate program right now, that’s seven years long for occupational therapy. Just seeing someone, just in the same position as me with these goals and knowing exactly what she wanted to do really inspired me to figure out where I wanted to go. And UMass Amherst was the first school I ever toured.

It was a pretty long process, because with the pandemic, you couldn't tour anywhere. When I say tour, I mean, my mom and I drove up here alone on a rainy day and we couldn't even get out of the car. We really just drove through campus. And I actually thought I did not wanna come here because I didn't get to see the nice parts of campus, because the nice parts here, you can't drive through. So I looked at a bunch of other schools. None of them really spoke to me. And I ended up coming back here in the Spring. I applied anyways, and I got in and I was able to actually walk around that time. I kind of fell in love with it.

For my freshman year academically, I came in undecided. I got into the School of Public Health by accident. Since I was undecided, I just listed a bunch of different schools in no specific order. And I guess the one I put first was the one that my application went to. So I got into the School of Public Health and I had to take an intro public health class freshman year, because everyone here has to do that. And I just really fell in love with the interdisciplinary things going on in public health and it kind of just bridged all of my interest into one major. So my freshman year ended up declaring a public health major. And I wasn't sure if I wanted to go into the medical field.

And that year I also had a single. It really just made me pick who I wanted to be with because I didn't have a roommate or certain people on my floor like kind of around all the time. I had to really pick my own friends.I walked into the dining hall freshman year and I saw a girl I went to high school with, which not many people from my high school go here cause I'm out of state. And she invited me to sit with her. And then these two girls sat down and I was wearing a shirt with one of my favorite musicians on it, and they complimented it.

I saw a notification pop up on one of their phones for the hiking club at Umass. And I was actually interested in going to one of their meetings. And I got the same notification at the same time. So we both kind of looked up and smiled at each other and were like, oh, maybe we should go to that together. And now that girl is my best friend here now.

After really putting myself out there and joining a research lab and TAing, doing some co-rec sports and things like that, I really found a community on campus. I think I just knew that that's what I wanted, and I did everything I could to build that here. Last summer, I got a job as a patient care technician after I got my certified nursing license. And I just really fell in love with patient care. It was just something that kind of came naturally to me. And I just really enjoyed putting a smile on people's faces and, you know, just being the person that was in the room with them all the time. I really am excited to be applying to medical schools next year. I hope to get into a program that's really good for primary care.

I really looked up to my mom. She's just my rock. She's my best friend. And she is a pediatric dentist. So she kind of introduced me to the medical field growing up. That's one of the only careers I really knew about. Even though she worked full time, she was always driving me to all of my basketball games, my soccer games, you know. My dad was there too. Just something about having like a female role model my whole life. She's just very, very smart. Yeah. She's just a very well rounded person, just cause she's really good at academics and went far in that sense. She's still so funny and just a great person that everyone wants to be around. So I think just having that strong woman influence on my life, kind of made me think that that's what I wanna do with my life. I wanna have a really good career, and I just really prioritize being independent.