41 year old Sarah Merrill, started her journey to medicine when she was a 17-year-old at Dartmouth College as a pre-med major. It was there that she met her husband, got married and by the time she graduated had a 5 month old baby.
Merrill initially planned to go straight into medical school but decided to put her schooling on hold to become a stay-at-home mom while her first daughter was young. Over the years, she and her husband expanded their family to nine children. Merrill never gave up on wanting to go into medicine and worked part-time in medical research.
And then when her youngest child was two, she decided to go back to school. "I was 34 and I decided to go back and start taking some more recent coursework and I had to retake the MCAT," she said. "I remember studying for the MCAT when my two youngest were 2 and 3 years old and my 2-year-old would climb on me like a mountain while I was trying to take practice tests."
Her family, including her mother, made the move together from Pennsylvania to Arizona so Merrill could attend medical school. At first, she thought she might just get her master’s degree, but decided to go all-in and follow her original dream of getting a degree in medicine. She encourages other women to not give up on their dreams and to "set the goals that are what you're really passionate about," and focus on each step to achieve them.
"Waiting so long to do this, I think, made me appreciate it more and made me enjoy it more," said Merrill. "And once I got into my clinical rotations, I noticed that I had a lot of life experience that helped me connect with a lot of patients, especially on my pediatrics and OBGYN rotations."
Now that she has graduated from Mayo Clinic in Phoenix, Arizona, the family will move again as she begins her neurosurgery residency at Indiana University next month.