Where We Belong (4 page)

Clearly, Michelle had the drive and the smarts to manage the academic workload, but in spring 2002 she would find out just how gifted a mind she was given.

“It was on a dare,” she says with a laugh.

One evening, Michelle was ribbing Josh for rarely making dinner. Knowing how smart Michelle was, he promised to cook if she would take the Mensa exam, a test given to identify people with extremely high IQs. Mensa members are those who score at or better than 98 percent of the general population. Michelle accepted the dare and took the test at the College of the Redwoods in nearby Eureka. She wasn’t sure if she would pass. The format was very different from a standardized test; questions involved logic and deductive reasoning. But when the results arrived, Josh cooked dinner and Michelle added
Member of Mensa, United States
, to her résumé.

In fall 2002, Michelle was extremely busy, studying for first-semester finals at Humboldt and working thirty hours a week. After nearly four years together, Josh and Michelle were crafting very different lives in terms of education and career paths. One night, after a full day of school and work, Michelle received an ultimatum from Josh.

“He said that even though we agreed that I’d go to college, he decided he wanted a wife who would stay home and take care of kids. He said, ‘If you don’t want to do that then we can’t stay married.’ ”

Having known for years that their aspirations in life were very different, Michelle moved out. She took the couple’s old pickup and for nearly a week, slept in the truck, showered in the university’s gym, took finals, and went to work. She then found a trailer to rent with a roommate.

The new semester and year would bring exciting opportunities for Michelle. In summer 2003, she began to explore the world on a molecular level in the laboratory. The American Heart Association awarded her a scholarship to conduct cardiovascular and bioengineering research at the University of California, San Diego. With little money to spare, she stayed with various friends in Southern California and slept on their couches. When she wasn’t working in the lab, Michelle enjoyed walking on the beach to clear her head and sort through the final details of her divorce. She even began to jog. Over the course of one summer, regular exercise and the healthy cooking techniques she learned at Chez Panisse proved to be a powerful combination.

“I realized I felt so much better. I’d never been a physically active person before. I lost quite a bit of weight and felt better about myself.”

The professor who oversaw the laboratory at UCSD where Michelle was doing summer research work was so pleased with her performance that he invited her to stay. She politely declined, explaining that her focus was on completing her premed coursework and applying to med school. The girl from Iowa with the strong work ethic, consistently high grades, and can-do attitude was proving herself to others and to Jacob.

“He got really excited for me and basically said, ‘You’re doing great. Don’t screw anything up and you should get into a medical school somewhere,’ ” she says, laughing. “He became a cheerleader for me.”

Over the next two years, Michelle immersed herself in premed courses and lab research at Humboldt. She continued to rely on guidance from Jacob, and also from married biology professors Patty Siering and Mark Wilson, who directed her toward impactful genetics and microbiology research projects to add to her résumé. At work, she began to consider incorporating her newfound passion for healthy living into classes at Pacific Flavors.

In her own life, Michelle had discovered that a vegan diet solved her problem with dairy allergies and also her past struggles with weight. Surely many other people could benefit from good-tasting food that also accommodated their medical conditions or desire to feel better. Although she had been advised not to offer healthy-cooking classes, Michelle knew her students were curious about the topic.

“People would ask, ‘How can I make that with less sugar?’ or ‘My family member has diabetes. Can they eat this?’ ”

Michelle turned to the Internet to better educate herself on the effects of food on the body. She utilized PubMed, a free online database that accesses studies in the US National Library of Medicine. With the information she gathered and her own story of success, Michelle convinced her boss to let her teach a course on how to prepare good-tasting healthy food. Michelle’s instincts were right; the class consistently sold out.

Education was her next focus. Michelle went to Jacob and told him she was interested in exposing low-income kids—whose parents may not have gone to college—to the concept of higher education. Jacob supported the idea and was already looking into developing an educational program at Humboldt for underserved kids. Online, Michelle found a similar program based at Stanford University and offered her help to the organizers. In early 2005, through Stanford, Michelle served as a teacher and mentor to minority and low-income high school students on an Indian reservation in Covelo, California. She shared with students how to effectively navigate a path to college. She also showed kids how to properly fill out paperwork for scholarships and financial aid.

Now twenty-four years old, nearly four years after she moved to California to pursue her dream, it was time for Michelle to do some navigating of her own. She needed to register to take the MCAT and determine which medical schools she wanted to target. Michelle would have to be choosy; the application process was expensive and airfare to interview destinations would be as well. She’d need to fly first out of the small Arcata/Eureka Airport to connect with flights departing from large airports like San Francisco International.

After passing the MCAT, Michelle was preparing her applications to send to med schools. She had no idea that eighteen hundred miles east, serendipity was cozied up next to her father at a picnic table in Audubon, Iowa.

At a family reunion, Michelle’s father, Mike, was sitting across the table from his cousin Nordahl and Nordahl’s wife, Suzanne, whom Mike had never met. He mentioned to the couple that Michelle was preparing to apply to medical schools. Nordahl and Suzanne excitedly revealed that she worked as director of the premedical advising program at the University of Vermont. Suzanne gave Mike her e-mail and phone number to pass along to his daughter.

In the months ahead, Michelle and Suzanne corresponded about the application process. When Suzanne reviewed Michelle’s curriculum vitae and grades, she offered an idea.

“She said, ‘You know, they really like quirky people at Harvard. You should apply to Harvard.’ I thought,
I am not wasting two hundred dollars applying to Harvard
.” Michelle laughs and adds, “
They do not want me at Harvard.
”

Not only did Michelle think she had no shot at Harvard, she didn’t want to live on the East Coast.

In September 2005, Michelle sent applications to twelve different medical schools; Harvard was not on the list. For financial reasons, she chose to interview with just three of the schools that offered invitations: the University of Iowa, the University of California at San Francisco, and the University of California at San Diego. Persistent, Suzanne continued to encourage Michelle to apply to Harvard before the October application deadline. Her confidence was rooted in the unique breadth of Michelle’s life experiences: she had worked on farms, taught in cooking schools, volunteered on a Native American reservation, and excelled in cardiovascular bioengineering and genetics research.

“Suzanne said that Harvard likes people who aren’t the perfect cookie-cutter type,” Michelle explains.

Ultimately, Michelle decided to honor Suzanne’s suggestion and apply to Harvard. She then flew to interviews in November and December at UCSD, U of I, and UCSF, all of which offered her enrollment in their medical schools. She had declined all other interview offers that came her way due to the expense and because she preferred to stay in California.

One school never responded: Harvard. Michelle was not surprised. She accepted the offer at UCSF.

In late December 2005, Michelle flew home to Iowa to visit family for several weeks. One afternoon in early January, she decided to study at a coffee shop while her father and stepmom worked. Scanning through her e-mails, Michelle noticed an entry in her spam folder. She clicked it open, anticipating a quick delete. Not so fast. The contents stunned and alarmed her.

“The Harvard invitation request went to my spam e-mail! I about had a heart attack,” she says, laughing. “One: I just couldn’t believe it, and two: I thought,
Of all the times something goes to my spam folder, why this?!
”

And even worse, she says, “I didn’t notice it until after my interview date had passed.”

Michelle immediately contacted administrators at Harvard and was relieved by their accommodating attitude.

“They said, ‘We have one interview day left, so if you can make it out here, you can interview.’ ”

Michelle flew from Iowa back to California to get the one interview suit she owned. She then boarded another plane and flew to Boston, her first-ever trip to the East Coast. Michelle made sure to share the news about the Harvard interview with Suzanne, Jacob, and the professors who had supported her throughout her three years at Humboldt. They were overjoyed. She describes her father’s reaction to the prestigious opportunity as “speaking Iowan.”

“You don’t ever tell people things that would give them a big head; you don’t brag about yourself. That’s just how you are in Iowa when you’re there,” she explains. “So, he said something briefly, like, ‘That’s exciting,’ but he was pretty low-key about it.”

Mike may have been reserved with Michelle, but she heard from friends in Mason City that he was amazed and full of pride.

“It meant a lot. I didn’t grow up with people hugging me or saying ‘I love you.’ I would bring home straight As and no one would say a word. I was rarely told anything positive about myself, so to hear that he was proud of me really meant a lot. I think that was the point in time he realized that I
did
know what I was doing,” she says, and laughs.

The morning of Michelle’s interview, she and a group of candidates gathered for a presentation about the benefits of attending Harvard Medical School. They sat together in the stately, multi-pillared Gordon Hall on the campus of the medical school.

“You can imagine how imposing this looked,” she recalls, “to someone of my background.”

The interviewees were told they had been selected from the as many as 7,000 applications the medical school receives each year. Only 165 of the approximately 1,000 interviewed that year would become the class of 2010. Michelle then split from the large group and began individual interviews with a current student and faculty members.

“I was definitely very anxious and awed—kind of in shock that I was there.”

As the day moved forward, Michelle felt more at ease; everyone was kind and the conversations flowed well. By two o’clock, she was finished and headed to the airport for a cross-country flight home. Michelle called her father and Rose, and her mother.

“I told them I felt really confident about the interviews and thought I might get in. I
never
say anything like that or feel that confident about anything. I’m not sure what it was, but I just had a feeling.”

Because Arcata, the small town where Michelle was attending Humboldt, has no nearby interstate and only a small airport, mail arrives late and sometimes out of order.

“My financial aid letter from Harvard arrived before my acceptance letter,” she says, chuckling. “I thought,
I guess this means I got in
.”

The acceptance letter arrived a few days later.

“I was totally over the moon. I just could not believe I got into Harvard Medical School.”

Michelle shared the amazing letter with her parents, her supporters at Humboldt, and Suzanne.

“I had that
Wow
reaction,” Suzanne recalls. “Still, I wasn’t that surprised. She was on a roll, getting quick acceptances at some of the best medical schools in the country. I joked with her, ‘Nice problem you have, Michelle.’ ”

Harvard truly was an incredible opportunity, but Michelle was torn. UCSF or Harvard? She listed pros and cons for both. Michelle loved living in California but was interested in the opportunity to explore the East Coast. She also understood the impact the word “Harvard” had on a résumé.

“I felt like the name recognition might help me pool resources to work on the projects I wanted to work on to help underserved folks in a variety of ways that I might not get going to UC San Francisco,” she explains, “which may or may not be true, but at the time, that’s what I thought.”

On the final day to decline or accept, Michelle chose Harvard. But before the next exciting chapter of her life could begin, Michelle had to close the last, dressed in a cap and gown. In May 2006, she graduated from Humboldt State summa cum laude with a bachelor of science in cellular/molecular biology and a minor in chemistry. Now twenty-five years old, Michelle packed a trailer with her belongings and drove with a friend from California to Boston, home to the campus of Harvard Medical School. Financial aid and need-based scholarships covered tuition and a small slice of the high cost of living in Boston. But, because of the academic workload, Michelle would not be able to hold down several jobs as she had in the past. The additional money Michelle needed for bills, food, and books came from her father and stepmother. They’d been giving her $500 per month since 2005 to help reduce the stress of her busy work and school schedule.

“It was a big sacrifice for them because they’ve never had a lucrative income. The way they could swing it was by spending very little on themselves, never really traveling or taking vacations, living in a modest house in a very inexpensive, small Iowa town, and not having any loans,” she says. “They don’t expect me to pay them back, but eventually, I will.”

In August 2006, Michelle began her adventure in medical school. Her plan was not only to get a medical degree but also to identify an area of medicine that she could improve.