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[K. Christopher]: My name is Kaitlyn Christopher, I’m 20, a junior at IUPUI in the School of Science, hoping to apply to medical school in the near future.

I love volunteering, I think it’s one of the best extracurricular programs that people can get involved in. My freshman yeah I was a Sam H. Jones Service Scholar. I was able to go to George Washington elementary school and help with the special needs students. It was so much fun; I got to practice my Spanish speaking skills and get to know a lot of kids.

So we had a great time and not only that but what’s really important to me is animal rescue, I’ve been a vet tech since high school and I just continue to work with different animal rescue organizations and the Humane Societies around Indianapolis because that’s really my passion.

My very first semester of college, I was only 18 years old and won the Miss Indiana USA pageant, so that was really exciting for me because I was able to go to the Miss USA pageant on live national TV, NBC, and compete with 50 of the most amazing women from around the country. So that’s really been a huge part of my life every day from here on out because I’ve made some really good friends I’ve kept in contact with and not only that but I was able to go on a reality show because there were scouters at the pageant looking for people to cast onto this new show and that was “Treasure Hunters” on NBC. I did that last fall and spent a month traveling the country and Europe and just doing amazing things I never would have had the opportunity to do otherwise.

I think being Miss Indiana USA was obviously a huge learning experience for me and now I’m a much better public speaker, I’m much more apt to deal with a large variety of people, I feel I’m more cultured because I’ve seen more things, I’ve done more things and I’ve grown up a lot in the past 2 years for sure.

I came from a high school called Western High School, close to Kokomo, and I chose IUPUI because I knew I really wanted to end up in the big city somewhere, but I really feel the best way you can prepare yourself for after your undergrad degree is to have jobs and internships, worked and to have been there and to have done that and I think that’s really what a big city offers you. So that’s why I think IUPUI was definitely the best choice for me.

I just recently got a job as a laboratory technician Start Nero Research Institute, I’m really excited about that because IUPUI has a great reputation for their research and they’re doing wonderful great things over there finding different receptors and passing that information along to people at Eli Lilly so that they can create new drugs that are more effective and better with less side effects for people all over the country.

So it’s really neat and really exciting and I’m very lucky and blessed to have such an opportunity to do something like that as an undergrad. I’m really still exploring what area of medicine I want to go into but right now I really think I’d like to be a gynecologist, I know that sounds really crazy and people are like “You wanna do what?!” but I really think I would like that job because I like working with other women and I like working with kids and I just think I’d be really good at that.