Portrait of a Young Leader
India Bonner is a first-year medical student at University of Colorado. She is very committed to the health and wellbeing of the Black community. She epitomizes what we hope for in our future doctors. We are sharing an excerpted version of her Dr. King Day presentation to the Community College of Aurora. MHMS
Today I want to share with you a little bit about my journey to medical school. My journey to medical school was untraditional and had some unexpected twists and turns. But I still made it! I’m here today to let you know that even though the path to your goal may not be how you envisioned it, you can still succeed if you persevere. I’m framing my talk today around a quotation from Martin Luther King Jr.
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
I knew I wanted to become a doctor since I was in high school and worked towards becoming one when I was in undergraduate school. At this point, the only reason I wanted to become a doctor was because I liked science and wanted to help others. With this as my motivation I went through the process of taking the MCAT- which is the Medical College Admission Test, completing my pre-requisite classes, and applying to schools. I didn’t have any doctors in my family or any doctors that I knew closely, so I wasn’t prepared for how difficult this process would be or all the resources I needed to build a strong application. As a result, after a year of working on my application, it wasn’t strong enough for me to be accepted into medical school.
At this point I was at a crossroads. I could choose to enter a career instead, like so many of my friends were doing and ‘start my life’. Or, I could regroup, and go through the painstaking medical school application process again. I ultimately knew that being a doctor was something that I really wanted to do! So I regrouped, met with my advisor, and started the process again. There’s a quote from Biggs Burke that really helped me at this time, and I hope it can help some of you too - “Don't be afraid to start over. This time you're not starting from scratch, you're starting from experience”.
I spent another year completing a post-baccalaureate certificate in health sciences. Not only did this help me score higher on the MCAT than I did before, but it strengthened my science foundation so much that my medical science classes now are not as difficult as I was expecting. It was also in this post-baccalaureate program that I had my first Black science teacher. He had practiced dentistry before teaching. It was at this point that I learned how great it felt to have a leader who shared my identity as a Black person. That made me understand the impact I’d have on my Black patients as a doctor.
I also worked in the TRIO Student Support Services-English as a Second Language Program here at CCA during that time (as you can see in the middle photo on the slide, some of my old t-shirts). Here I learned more about the impact I wanted to make as a leader and how to be an advocate for others. I learned that as a doctor, I want to be an advocate for my patients’ health and connect them to the resources they need for success.
Finally, I had the opportunity to volunteer at Denver Health, Denver’s safety net hospital. I learned that I wanted to work with and advocate for uninsured /underinsured patients.
When I applied to medical school again, I knew exactly what impact I wanted to make in medicine and what communities I wanted to advocate for. My motivation for becoming a physician became so much more than enjoying science and wanting to help others. When I received my acceptance call last year I was elated. I was so grateful that I didn’t give up on myself.
I matriculated into medical school last Summer (there’s a photo from my white coat ceremony in the upper left). Now I’m involved in so many things to support the community. I’m working with Dr. Richardson in Colorado Black Health Collaborative to improve the health of Black Coloradans. I’m speaking out against injustice against Black people as co-president for White Coats for Black Lives (the bottom left photo is from a Die In event we had to protest against police brutality), and am advocating for my diversity in healthcare as a member of Students for a National Healthcare plan (the large photo is me speaking about healthcare bias at the state capitol) and as a leader in Community and STudents Against Healthcare Racism (CSTAR), to expose children from underrepresented groups to different professions in healthcare.
Without the twists and turns in my path to medical school, I wouldn’t have known what type of difference I wanted to make in healthcare and how important community was to me. My hope for you all is that you don’t give up on yourself even when the path to your goal becomes unlike you pictured. The challenges you face along the way can help you grow as a person and identify what type of difference you want to make.
