Send Sammi Vantine to NYU Sydney to continue her Pre-Med Studies!

Samantha Vantine Start Date: Oct 2, 2015 - End Date: Oct 31, 2015
  • New York University Sydney, 157-161 Gloucester St, The Rocks NSW 2000, Australia

My Travel Story

by: Samantha Vantine Start Date: Oct 2, 2015 - End Date: Oct 31, 2015
I’m from a small town in Massachusetts, where there are about as many cows as there are people.  Cultural diversity was not exactly something I had the opportunity to experience much growing up.  Hence, coming to NYU itself was alluring for the diversity it offered when I first applied to colleges.  Now that I have come to experience a bit of the cultures that fill Manhattan, I would like to expand my horizons even further to encompass those of other places in the world.  I want to learn how to sympathize with people from cultures different from my own on a more intimate level so that one day, when I am a doctor, I might be able to communicate better with my patients.  Being empathetic to others radically different from oneself is not a skill everyone immediately possesses and must be worked at, especially for those in fields in which empathy is the key to success.  So many doctors dismiss religious and cultural norms that seem to conflict with modern medicine, often to the detriment of patients physical, spiritual and emotional health.  I strive to educate myself in order to separate myself from that cold, unsympathetic side of medicine and to become a doctor who will treat a patient not as his disease, but as a person.  I want to study away in Sydney in part simply because my program is offered there, but mostly for the amazing biological systems that are native to Australia.  There is no where else on earth that has such amazing biodiversity and plants and animals that have evolved to such a unique setting.  The harsh heat of the country has made it home to a strange and intriguing array of plants and animals that, as a biology student, I can’t help but marvel at.  It would be incredible to experience the environment and inhabiting organisms of Australia first hand.  I would like to study away Spring 2016 because it is my only opportunity to do so and still stay on track to earn my major in four years.  It is unlikely I will get the opportunity to travel so far for many years to come.  Just as taking the plunge and attending college at NYU was a character and confidence building experience, I anticipate that traveling all the way across the world will help me to grow into a stronger woman.  


  • New York University Sydney, 157-161 Gloucester St, The Rocks NSW 2000, Australia

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