Double Majoring in Pre-med and Pre-law by Juan

Double Majoring in Pre-med and Pre-law by Juan - May 2023 Scholarship Essay

Many students don't always know what they are going to study when they finish high school, and I can relate to the pressure of trying to figure out what you're going to study when going to college. Sometimes we are torn between choosing two or more things that want to study, for a long time I have always been torn between choosing to study either medicine or law. I didn't know I could double major in both until my Freshman Avid teacher Ms. Wilcox recommended me to double major since it would let me study both career paths simultaneously. When doing more research about double majoring I found that many Universities and colleges encourage students to double major if they are passionate about two career paths.

The reason I choose to study both medicine and Law is because I always felt underrepresented in both fields, and I've had some unfortunate experiences with people in these professions. Two examples that come to mind are when my father broke his leg when he was at work, he had fallen from a ten-foot scaffold that was not assembled properly. He ended up going to the doctor, but my parents had a difficult time communicating with the doctor, both my parents only spoke Spanish and the doctor didn't know Spanish the clinic didn't have any nurses or doctors who spoke Spanish and there were no interpreters either. My elementary school wasn't too far from the clinic, so my mother took me out of school to help translate, being very young and in elementary I found it very difficult to translate when I didn't know how to say certain words. When we finally left the clinic, my parents were talking about how there weren't any Latino doctors or anyone who was able to translate.

And for the law side, my family had to get a lawyer to help protect us from our next-door neighbor who kept harassing my family. My parents have had a very difficult time trying to find a lawyer who didn't judge them for being immigrants, my parents brought me along a few times to help translate and I have witnessed some lawyers saying that they can't help my parents and one lawyer even said that they don't help immigrants. This made my parents feel bad about their selves, but they continued to try to find a lawyer that could help them and eventually, we did end up finding a lawyer who was able to help us. But this opened my eyes to how many lawyers didn't want to help immigrants no matter what their status was.

There have been more times when, my family, friends, and others have been underrepresented or have been treated badly by the medical and law communities. I'm still deciding which career I want to pursue after college, but I know that I made the right choice to double major because, in the end, I'm hoping to enter either profession so I can represent people like my parents. Both career fields are now starting to make changes so everyone and anyone will be included and not discriminated against but as much as things keep improving, I want to be a part of the change as well. Being passionate about double majoring and having the potential to make a change to help others that are in similar situations that my family has gone through has helped to motivate me to go through with the majors I intend to study.