A Change of Plan
I was born and raised in Vega Baja, a town on the north central coast of Puerto Rico. My mom stayed at home with my three brothers and I—though she had a science degree she never practiced—and my dad was a business-minded entrepreneur known for making things happen. I like to think I inherited some of that spirit. While science is often seen as structured and methodical I want to make science extremely creative and disruptive, and that's exactly what I've been doing throughout my profession.
I moved to Pennsylvania for college and started out on the premed track. At first, research was just something I did to check a box on my med school application. But in the summer before I applied, I went through a difficult personal time and started to question everything and see life through a radically different lens. I remember sitting in front of my laptop with my applications ready to go, staring at the price tag to submit them—over a thousand dollars. I had the MCAT score, the letters of recommendation, everything. But I paused and asked myself, “Do I really want this?”
The answer was no. I closed the laptop.
That decision created a void. I was a rising senior and president of the healthcare honor society at Penn State. I had always been a planner. Suddenly, the plan was gone. I decided to take a gap year after graduation and continue doing research. Then one day in November, sitting in a molecular genetics lecture, the professor was explaining how to clone DNA fragments. Something clicked. I remember thinking, “I really love this.” Right then and there, I decided to apply to PhD programs.
I knew I wanted to aim high—Harvard, MIT, Yale. But when I checked the deadlines, I saw all the applications were due the next day. (Yes, that’s right: the next day!)
I stood up in the middle of class and walked out. I found my research mentor and asked if she could revise my letters of recommendation so they would apply to PhD programs, not med schools. She and my teaching mentor got to work that night. I rewrote my essay, called the schools, and asked if I could submit the GRE later. Most said no. But when I called Jason Millberg, the chemical biology PhD program coordinator at Harvard, he said yes.
He still jokes that he thought I was a prank call. But I took the GRE in Puerto Rico that December, submitted my scores, interviewed, and was accepted. That’s how I ended up here at Harvard Griffin GSAS.
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