The Ultimate Journey Sonya Brown
Considering my family background, I have no idea how I ended up at Millsaps College. It’s not that no one in my family considered education to be important; it’s just that going to school became secondary to some other things-like eating. To say I come from humble origins is definitely an understatement. My family does not have a lot of money, and everyone has always worked very hard. For some of them, going to school would have been an enjoyable and rewarding experience, but keeping food on the table was a more important and trying task. Because she had to begin working at a young age, my maternal grandmother only made it to second grade, and my paternal grandmother never even learned to read. One of my grandfathers did graduate from high school, but the other one stopped at about the seventh or eighth grade. Both of my parents graduated from high school, and that was truly a major accomplishment in my family. Now, even more astounding I am about to graduate from a very fine liberal arts institution, making me a member of the first generation of my family to graduate from college. When I first learned of Millsaps College, I was not particularly impressed. One day when I was in about the eleventh grade, my aunt allowed me to tag along for a meeting that she had in Jackson. As we were driving down State Street, she jokingly pointed to the campus and asked me, “Why don’t you go to Millsaps?” I had never even heard of Millsaps, and furthermore, I had no intention of going to school so close to home. I was going to “get the heck out of Dodge,” leave Mississippi, and experience something totally new. As a joke, I even applied to Yale, hoping just maybe I’d get the opportunity to hop on a plane and fly away to Connecticut. To my complete and utter amazement, I was actually accepted to Yale but visiting the campus made me
long for the very thing I thought I didn’t want-home. Yale was too cold, too snobby, and the cafeteria put onions in the mashed potatoes. Sweet tea was nowhere to be found, and apparently, my Southern accent was an oddity which prompted people to ask me to talk for them so they could hear it. When I returned home, I realized that maybe home wasn’t such a bad place, and when I visited Millsaps, it felt like home. People smiled at me and were really friendly. The mashed potatoes in the cafeteria were normal, and I could deal with the temperature. Therefore, I decided to embrace this new place and prepared to spend the next four years of my life here. When I arrived on the campus, I had no idea what to expect. Since no one in my family had gone to college, we had no idea what would happen to me once I got here. Besides being afraid I’d get lost, I was also absolutely terrified that I would not be able to handle the work. I attended a very small high school, and my graduating class was only about thirty people. My school didn’t even have enough students or interest to attempt to offer advanced courses. I had heard these horrible rumors that Millsaps was a terribly hard school, and I simply did not think that I was prepared to enter such an academically rigorous environment. My fears did not paralyze me, though. Instead they energized me, and I began to work as I never had before. In high school, I didn’t have to study. Once I got to Millsaps, though, I had to teach myself how to do it. I slept five hours per night, half the amount of sleep I had gotten in high school, and I studied from the time I got out of class until I went to bed. Eventually, my hard work paid off. Not only did I keep up with my fellow classmates, but my grades were often the same or better than some of their grades. I knew that some of the students were smarter than me and had gone to very challenging high schools, but they did not perform as well as I did. I quickly realized that my success at Millsaps did not necessarily depend on my background but simply on my willingness to work hard.
Once I got over my initial fears about attending Millsaps, another daunting task appeared before me. I had to pick a major and decide what I was going to do with the rest of my life. My family members advocated being a doctor or being a lawyer. Apparently, these were considered honorable, not to mention high paying, professions. I didn’t want to limit myself, though. I had fought so hard to just make it to college, and I wanted to explore every possible opportunity. At the same time, my family had sacrificed much on my behalf, and I certainly did not want to disappoint them. Torn between these two desires, I began to explore my options. The first class I encountered was Introductory Cell Biology. Unluckily I thought, my professor was the chair of the department, and I had no idea what to expect. She was a great teacher, and I learned about biology in ways which I never was exposed to in high school. For the first time, I truly understood science and began to enjoy learning about it. With my newfound love of science combined with my intense love of service, I seriously began to entertain the notion of becoming a physician. Once again, though, I felt limited, boxed in, and continued to explore my options. My most interesting and memorable classes that I encountered during my explorations were my IDS classes. I took a class in which I learned about ancient religions and examined what constituted suffering, and in another I read ancient Celtic poetry. I even explored Modernism and its connection to the Harlem Renaissance. I took classes in English, psychology, and even considered a foray into the Education Department. Despite all of my searching, I was yet drawn back to my first love, science and particularly the field of medicine. In fact in one my IDS classes taught by Dr. Garrett, I wrote a paper in which I examined relevant medical issues of slavery. I was absolutely fascinated by all that I learned about the medical history of these individuals. Through my research, I was then able to understand in a historically significant
fashion the current state of health care and health disparities in the African American community. The paper I wrote for Dr. Garrett’s class helped me understand the field of medicine through a historical perspective while my science classes explained the technical aspects of the field. Armed with such knowledge, I definitively decided to go to medical school. As graduation looms closely, I realize that attending a liberal arts institution has provided such depth in my education. I have not just learned interesting facts from history or just gained an understanding of science and the field of medicine. I have been able to make meaningful connections between past and present events and also examine their possible implications for the future. I came here expecting to learn about a particular subject that would prepare me to get a job someday. Along the way, Millsaps College taught me an invaluable skill, how to make meaningful connections both intellectually and academically. Though I have learned much information about many topics, this skill was one that books could not teach and that only a special place like Millsaps could have cultivated.
