Sophomore Christina Lewis is a case study in dedication.
Afterall, it’s not everyday that a seventh grader makes a career decision and sticks with it through college.
Lewis was 12 years old when she decided she wanted to become a surgeon. And although it will probably be close to a decade before she holds that scalpel in her hand, Lewis says she is confident that her future will consist of spending all hours of the day and night on call in a hospital.
Her interest in medicine was sparked when her seventh grade teacher assigned an activity in which each student was given an infectious disease.
“I had originally gotten smallpox,” Lewis says, “and so I traded someone for HIV, and it was a very big joke in seventh grade because I was running around telling everyone I traded Alice for HIV AIDS.”
Lewis says she has always had an intrinsic interest in medicine, and although the path to medical school has not been easy thus far, but it’s also not going to hold her back.
“My first step was accelerating myself in science in high school,” Lewis says.
When Lewis was in tenth grade she started a project in the science research program at her high school.
To pursue a science research project, Lewis needed a mentor to oversee her project — so she interviewed with a cancer specialist at Sloane-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York City.
“I was in the interview and he asked me what my GPA was, so I told him my GPA,” Lewis says, “And then he said, ‘Do you like cancer?’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t like it, but I’m interested in it. And he said, ‘OK — do you want to join my lab?’”
Lewis says the opportunity was her big break in terms of learning more about medicine and surgery — she even had the chance to watch her mentor perform surgery.
“That was when I fell in love with surgery,” Lewis says, “I was 17 years old, and it totally clicked.”
Lewis says she is constantly amazed that patients can go into surgery sick and come out — at least, mostly — better.
Lewis’ research at Sloane-Kettering Memorial Hospital eventually earned her recognition as a semifinalist in the Intel Science Talent Search.
When Lewis started college, she was a chemistry major on the pre-medical track. She also started shadowing a vascular surgeon at UNC Hospitals through being a member of the Carolina Pre-Medical Association.
She says she shadowed him both in the OR and in his clinic.
“I saw the outside of surgery, you know, follow-ups — how to interact with actual patients,” she says.
During the spring of her freshman year, she started volunteering at UNC Hospitals. Lewis is also actively involved with UNC Dance Marathon, the biggest philanthropy on campus.
She says this experience helped ease her transition from the chemistry major to becoming a global studies major with a public health focus.
“I want to help people — my goal is not to be a researcher,” she says.
Lewis says she went to the Steele Building to change her major when she realized that her interests lay more with the human side of medicine than with organic chemistry and physics classes.
She says at first she was disappointed by the change, but nearing the end of her first full semester as a global studies and French double major, she is so much happier.
“Since then, I think I’ve become so much more content with my journey toward medicine,” Lewis says, “This has been me refocusing my journey.”