Stanford Univ. Minority Medical Alliance

This past weekend was amazing inspirational, a life changing moment, brought hope into my life and showed me what the path i should pursue in life.

This saturday i went to the Stanford University Minority Medical Alliance (SUMMA), which is a premed conference. I recently went to one in davis but i didnt get much information out of it, so i wasnt expecting much from the conference.

Before i start talking about the conference i want to say that palo alto and the stanford campus is a beatiful place!!!! Stanford blew me away, maybe because im attracted by spanish arhitecture or maybe it was the church, i dont know what it was but i was impressed by the campus.

The conference started at 8 30 but advised to get there at 7 15 to beat the rush. So i picked up my friend from Chicanos in Health Education and his two friends and we were on our way around 6 20am i thought it took more than an hour to get there, i was wrong it took 40 minutes to arrive, we were there early, but i wasnt complaining we got free breakfast!!!



After breakfast the real conference started, and different minority doctors were introducing themselves and advising us to help close the gap between health disparities in minorities. The highlight of the conference was hearing 3 speeches from the 3 med students and their road to getting accepted to med school. Their stories were so inpirational, but the one that impacted me the most was when one of the med students at age 5 lived in south central LA and as she was walking back with her mom from a school event a thug stopped her and demanded her mom for money, but the mom couldnt speak english so the 5 year old responded that her mom didnt have any money, her mom even showed him her purse, then from frustration he shot the mom in the leg. Thats how her motivation to become started. The road was not easy for her. She ended up going to UCLA but while attending there she failed calculus and struggled in OChem, but her passion was to help in the community she accomplished this by doing health awareness in the community and even going to Mexico and teaching the community about diabetes. After college she was part of a community health center and she received her M.S. from Cal State LA, she applied for medical school and now she's in Stanford. This is one of 3 stories that i made an impact. It was so inspirational it showed me that i shouldnt rush, i should take my time enjoy what i like to do best, which is get an MPH work in the community and then apply for medschool. The workshops that i attended where also filled with a lot of information i was not aware of. Basically the whole conference was awesome!!!!