Journey to Becoming a Physician: An Immigrant's Tale

In my AMCAS primary application, I didn 't get the opportunity to talk about my background. I believe my upbringing will have a profound effect on the physician I will become and the patients I will be able to serve. Also, it will allow me to transition efficiently into the diverse student body at Saint Louis University School of Medicine and the society of Saint Louis.

As a three year old, innocent and clueless, I was on a plane travelling half way across the world to Canada. All I knew, at the time, was that I was leaving Argentina, the country where I was born, lived in for 3 years, and where all of my relatives live, to a country with a different language, a different culture, and different people. My father had already been living in Canada for three months and now, my mother along with my sister and I were making the long 18 hour trek to Canada. At the gate, we said "see you again" to our relatives thinking that we would be back living in Argentina in 3-4 years.

Although I didn 't understand at the time, the reason we moved to Canada was because my father received an international scholarship to pursue graduate school in veterinary medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. Our family was planning on staying in Canada until my father finished his schooling, with the idea of moving back to Argentina.

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Before moving to Canada, his goal was to get his MSc degree and move back to work at the veterinary college of our hometown, General Pico, La Pampa. The problem with this plan was that when my father graduated, in the early 2000 's, Argentina was in a crisis. The Argentinean government was bankrupt while being investigated for corruption. The banks in Argentina were shut down, therefore, people could not withdraw their money. Also, unemployment rates were higher than ever before. This led to violent protests in the streets where multiple citizens were injured and/or killed by