About Me
I’m Monica. I graduated high school in June 2026, and this fall I’m moving to Los Angeles to study Health and Human Sciences at Loyola Marymount University.
The plan to become a doctor isn’t a someday plan anymore. Along with my place at LMU, I have early acceptance to Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine through its Early Acceptance Program. Four years of undergraduate study, four years of medical school. The road still has to be walked, but it has been mapped.
Choosing it took a while. I applied to 29 schools, narrowed that to 22, wrote 76 essays, and was accepted to 17 — several of them better known than the one I picked. I said no to those.
What I wanted wasn’t the most impressive name on a sweatshirt. It was the most direct honest route to the work itself. A seat already held for me in medical school was worth more than a school that would sound better when people asked. I’d rather spend the next eight years becoming a physician than spend the first four hoping I’d get the chance to start.
I’ve been drawn to how the body works, and to the people who repair it, since before I could explain why. What held my attention wasn’t the science on its own. It was the idea that understanding something well enough could change someone’s worst day.
Most of what I’ve learned about medicine so far happened outside a classroom. Volunteering at Kaiser Permanente and EvergreenHealth. A clinical summer internship at Stanford, a medical school intensive at Johns Hopkins, a week at HMS MedScience. Founding Emerald City Angels, a junior guild that has raised more than $35,000 for research at Seattle Children’s. A week as a page in the Washington State Senate.
I’ve been writing it all down here since 2023 — what I saw, what surprised me, what I got wrong. The next chapter starts in Los Angeles.
White Coat Dreamin