Trauma and Healing in Academia as a Pre-Med Latina

Today marks nine weeks since I started my new job and I can’t believe the time has passed so quickly! Thus far, I’ve enjoyed every second of working here, and some mornings as I drive through the main campus’s palm trees, pass the hospital and medical school, or walk to my lab, it all still feels like a dream.

Although I’m a new employee, it’s been a different experience than simply starting a new job as I’m formally part of a post-bac program for first-generation college students and/or underrepresented minorities in medicine. I’m proud to say those leading my program have made huge efforts to accommodate us and make sure we’re in the lab that best aligns with our academic and professional goals. While I knew this new job and program would be the beginning of a new journey and hopefully, one that opens many doors for me professionally, I didn't anticipate that healing would be part of the experience.

As a Latina in higher education, I’ve experienced a lot of trauma I didn’t understand was trauma at the time. I’m sure many Latino students and underrepresented minorities from underprivileged backgrounds can probably relate to the traumatizing experience that comes from not only existing in a space that was meant to keep us out, but trying to thrive regardless of that fact.

Growing up in a predominantly Latino and low-income town, I never had this feeling of uneasiness or comments directed at me for being different. But when I went to a predominantly white, middle- to upper-class high school, I experienced these feelings for the first time. Although I would do it all over again because I believe these steps in my journey were meant to take place to get me where I am and be who I am today, microaggressions and being completely alone in an academic space were difficult to navigate and experience.

Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, comments only got worse once I was accepted to an Ivy League university. I learned to brush off these comments, after all, that’s all they were. But they did play a role in my imposter syndrome. Sometimes the more that people repeat stereotypes about your community that discredit your intellect and accomplishments, the more you start to believe them each time you feel like you’ve failed. Thankfully, I didn’t experience many microaggressions and stereotypes from my classmates at Princeton, but I did experience being alone in my academic settings once again.

There were very few Latinx students and faculty at Princeton and it was difficult finding those that could relate to me and my lived experiences. I often felt that the only ones on campus that really understood me were the Hispanic dining hall staff. But conversely, they didn’t understand what it was like to be alone in my classes. I was immensely grateful for the opportunity I had been given to attend such a prestigious institution, but I felt like in doing so, I was a toy in a claw machine that someone had won and transported. I was out of the machine and free, but I was so lost in my new environment with no tools or help on how to survive.

I missed the homemade Mexican food, hearing my name pronounced correctly, speaking in Spanglish and hearing banda up and down my neighborhood. Other students’ didn’t have the same familial or cultural pressures, or understand that no one at home understood the struggles of navigating college or being pre-med. That’s what the student that asked me why affinity groups existed my freshman year didn’t understand. Simply put, affinity groups exist for solidarity and camaraderie in a place where you’re a rarity, and sometimes they’re the only way we feel connected to home in a place that’s the polar opposite of everything we've ever known.

While there were few Latinx students in general, there were even fewer in my pre-med or health related courses. I distinctly remember being the only Latinx student or underrepresented minority in many of my classes where we were discussing public health issues, health disparities, and the future of the American healthcare system. It felt weird knowing that the U.S. population is almost 20% Latinx, but so few Latinx were in the spaces that would one day affect this same population.

Overall, it was a lonely, weird, and traumatizing experience. So being part of the REACH cohort, an academic and professional program where the majority of scholars are Hispanic and first-generation, has been healing. Instead of feeling like my peers don’t understand my cultural norms, familial expectations or disadvantaged background, I’m surprised by how much we have in common and how much we understand each other’s interests and struggles.

My first week here for example, I attended a Los Tigres del Norte concert with other Mexican American scholars. Never in a million years did I think I would be listening and dancing to banda, quintessentially Mexican music, with my peers at an academic institution. As the stage’s colorful lights lit up the auditorium and folklórico dancers began walking on stage, it hit me that my two worlds - once so opposing to each other - weren’t so separate anymore. It was experiences like this in addition to sending each other Hispanic Tik Toks, a co-worker making me picadillo, talking about our childhoods in immigrant families and more, that dissolved this divide for me.

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Meeting other pre-meds and pre-PhD students in my program that relate to me culturally has made me feel less alone in academia. It’s allowed me to understand that I’m not the only first-gen Latinx student on this journey to becoming a doctor, and we have each other's backs. This program, like Princeton, has transported me out of the machine I was accustomed to, but the transition to the outside hasn’t been such a culture shock. It's two months in and instead, the journey has been a familiar, healing environment with friends that understand me and where I’m coming from.

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