MEET LOCAL LEGENDS: By State

"My father was a GP and I always wanted to be like him, to interact with the patients and their families, helping them as much as possible...even their emotional needs."

"My interest in premature babies started as a teenager, when I spent my summer vacations as a nurse's aid at a Leprosarium outside Pretoria, caring for premature babies who had been born to women with leprosy and removed from their care."

"Since I had polio when I was a child, I've been around doctors my entire life. But I always wanted to go to medical school. My grandfather was a general practitioner."

"When I was five or six, I told my Mom I had decided I wanted to be a doctor, and she said, “Go for it!”"

"My fourth grade health science class first inspired me to become a doctor. I was especially fascinated by the idea of medical discoveries and applying medical research to clinical care."

"From an early age I have always been fascinated trying to understand how body systems interact. In second grade, for instance, I was doing experiments in building heart muscles and my mother and neighbors taught me about dissection. In seventh grade I knew I wanted to be an endocrinologist, especially after an experiment in which I increased the fertility of mice ten-fold by changing their endocrines."

"I don't know why, but when I was five years old and in first grade, I decided I was going to be a doctor. I even told Santa Claus, 'I'm going to be a doctor!'"