As the UT Southwestern Medical School class of 2019 looks ahead this week to Match Day, they are also looking back on their education and how it has shaped their future as physicians.

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Transcript

- [Hannah] I had heard many stories about UT Southwestern specifically from my parents since they both went here and met here. I got into UT Southwestern, and my parents were ecstatic. It was in a great city. I absolutely love Dallas, and it was some place that I had a lot of family members that lived here. I think I was exposed to it from a really young age from as far back as I can remember as a kid on Saturdays would wake up, get donuts with my dad, and he would take me to the hospital. More of my personal reason for being interested in medicine is that my sister who's three years younger than me, Olivia, she was diagnosed with Prader-Willi Syndrome around her sixth birthday which is just a very rare genetic disease. It really had a huge impact on me and on my family and really that as I grew up and as I started to have more autonomy over my own life, she was always a big reason that I wanted to give back to her. I wanted to get involved in some way with helping her, and has since colored a lot of the decisions that I have made and really fueled me to want to continue in medicine. It's been a very long journey getting to the start of my career. Actually getting to be somebody's doctor is something I've wanted for a really long time.

- [Miles] All through college my plan and goal was to always go to medical school, but at the same time as I was focusing on academics, I was always running track. I was on the track team there and ended up having a lot more success than I had ever planned or anticipated. After I graduated I was offered a sponsorship contract to compete professionally, so I ended up running for Asics. It's where I had the opportunity to travel around the country, around the world. I met my wife while I was at BYU I think between my sophomore and junior year. Being married in med school isn't that uncommon, but being married or having kids, I think of it as a bigger challenge, but for me I think it's probably been more helpful than anything. When Max was born, I think while my wife was pregnant with him, we were learning about all the science and physiology of pregnancy. Once he was born, it was just a great experience to, both from the perspective of a father but also the perspective of a medical student. I think there's a lot of things, a lot of work associated with this school. It's known as a very of cutting edge research that's able to help support the medical community. Just thinking about match day is an exciting time to just find out what all the hard work and everything that we've done so far and what the end result of that is going to be. I'm proud to say that I'll be a graduate of UT Southwestern. - [Max] I had acute appendicitis at 8, at 8, 8 years old. I remember being rushed to the hospital feeling very sick. The surgeon was the one who fixed the problem for me, and my impression of surgeons and stuff like that would encounter a problem and fix it, and get people feeling better pretty quickly. Growing up in the Riravenda valley, it's very different. It's very agricultural based, and we, growing up, we picked onion. We picked watermelon, and during that time, there was some, some very strong financial difficulties, so we would move into our grandma's home. I would have to walk about a block or so to go sleep at my grandma's house because she had extra bedrooms to sleep in, so having to do that for a few years, I really got to experience the hardships of a young family struggling financially to get through school, but it also showed me how important education and having job security was because I got to see it firsthand. Being from a very small community that's very much underserved, I want to be sure that I become a doctor who is well trained, but also remember that certain areas of the United States are underserved and aren't studied as much. UT Southwestern has done a great job of keeping us medical students connected to the patients, connected to the community.