Now that I am entering my junior year of college, I am finally seeing the issue with our education system. As a society, we push for high school graduates to pursue a higher level of education so that they can have a firm career and a good life. However, as I look around my campus at the University of Florida, all I hear and see is unhappiness. From my peers to acquaintances, everyone seems to be struggling with a mental disorder or failing to meet the standards of their family's expectations. Not gonna lie, I struggled with the same shit freshman year. My parents have always pushed the agenda for me to be the first doctor in the family; however, I never felt like that was my true calling. I went along with what they asked of me for two semesters when I was a health science major with a pre-med track. I always knew being a doctor was not the route for me, but my intuition was confirmed right after I went on a mobile clinic trip abroad with MEDLIFE. I ventured to Ecuador with UF MEDLIFE chapter to provide medicine, education, and development to low income families in different areas. It was this trip that made me really understand who I was supposed to be. As I was going through the different rotations during the mobile clinic period, I felt that I was not passionate about the medical aspect of things but more to the circumstances of those patients' lives. I started to connect the dots why poverty exists and how themes of hunger, sanitation, and education fall under that umbrella. It was on the last day of the trip of which I came to the realization that I wanted to make global changes rather than just live life helping each patient at a time.
