Caroline Olsen is a public health student at BYU. She talked about her journey through Public Health and how she is preparing for medical school.
Caroline Olsen is a public health student at BYU who first began as a biochemistry major. After a few months of doing biochemistry, she found that it wasn’t a field that she was interested in leading her life in.
With this newfound knowledge, she looked into how she could enter the medical field and find a degree that would allow her to pursue medical school.
After talking to her mom, who was also a doctor, Olsen considered switching her major to public health for her undergrad degree.
Olsen explained, “So my second semester I took the intro to public health class and I love it. And then I switched my major.”
She wanted to go into the medical field, but didn’t know how to take that step. That led her to finding her environmental and occupational health lined up with her goals of prerequisites for medical school.
What it showed her is that she really loved working with people in the medical field. Olsen explained, “I really do love looking at health from the upstream rather than from the problem itself.”
Olsen saw that she loved working with people. She found that it was something that she cared about, and it gave her motivation to stick with public health through the hard moments.
“School is tough and so the most important thing is just to choose things that you really love.”
Her passion for public health has allowed her to be able to prepare herself for med school knowing that she is able to work through extreme difficulties and setbacks.
She never wanted to do schooling that was just checking a box for herself. She wanted to find a career and major that would allow her to continue her dream of entering the medical field and helping individuals live a better life.
Public health ended up being that opportunity to find a way to make a tangible difference in her community through her schooling. It also prepared her for being able to work in the medical field by better understanding the root causes of medical issues.
Gaining her degree in public health and preparing herself for medical school with her applications has never felt like a chore and gave Olsen the confidence that she was doing what she was always meant to do.
“The whole point of life is you’re not trying to do things to check a box. You’re doing things to learn and experience and grow and become the person you want to be.”