Blanca Morales
Before I ever held a stethoscope, I held a spark plug and YouTubed my way to both. I'm a second-year medical student who can lead a rugby team, explain insulin resistance in Spanish, and blend “Punta”—a vibrant, rhythmic dance from Central America—into salsa moves. While I’m still trying to perfect my mother’s Guatemalan black bean recipe, I have perfected how to dodge a $495 mechanic bill by changing my own spark plugs. (Spoiler: it worked, and I only paid $62 for the part. Bonus: now I know what a torque wrench is and just how satisfying that click feels when you get the tightness just right.)
Blanca Morales
That DIY moment might seem small, but it captures the essence of how I move through the world. When the instructions aren’t handed to you, you figure them out. When money is tight, you stretch it. When you don’t know the way, you build one.
People often say med school is challenging—and it is—but when you’re used to building from scratch, challenge becomes a second language. I grew up the eldest daughter in a single-parent immigrant household in California, where a “gap year” turned into 10 years of unpaid internships in life skills because no one could guide me. I learned by falling, getting back up, and—sometimes too late—asking for help. Like when I bought our first family car with my hard-earned savings, thinking I was giving us freedom, only to discover it came with a million problems. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I couldn’t afford not to learn. That car became my classroom. I figured it out one breakdown at a time, and in the end, it lasted long enough to teach my mother and siblings how to drive. What could’ve been a costly mistake became a shared lifeline.
That’s the world I came from. Where 700 square feet felt like a mansion, as long as you weren’t sharing it with multiple families. Where studying meant staying late after work or leeching WiFi outside a Starbucks I couldn’t afford to walk into.
I didn’t just grow up with financial hardship; I grew up with financial creativity. For many years, we couldn’t afford a Christmas tree, so my mother drew a triangle on the wall, outlined it with lights, and placed donated gifts from “Adopt-a-Family” programs underneath. She turned scarcity into celebration and taught me that even when your back is against the wall—or the border—your spirit doesn’t have to be.
At 10, I met my father for the first time and moved to Texas, hopeful for a fresh start. We lived together—for all of 1 1/2 months—in a shack that made “fixer-upper” sound luxurious, until he moved us under a tree on an empty lot and said he was going to work. He never came back. Not that day, not ever. Eventually, we ended up in a shelter and then on a Greyhound bus back to California.
That journey could have ended with my mother’s deportation.
At the El Paso checkpoint, an immigration officer asked questions my mother couldn’t understand. I was the only one who could hybrid both languages to plead, “My siblings and I are American citizens, and she’s the only family we have.” Miraculously, he let us through. That day, I learned survival is sometimes a miracle—and other times, it's a kind stranger and a little boldness in broken English.
I carried that tenacity into every phase of my life. At 15, I became the primary breadwinner. By 25, I gave myself permission to prioritize my own goals while still ensuring my family's well-being. I finished undergrad as a full-time student and full-time worker, but pursuing medicine meant taking post-baccalaureate pre-med courses, often just one or two at a time, at community college. Sometimes I dropped classes to pick up more hours, choosing bills and groceries over the MCAT. My path wasn’t linear, but it was deliberate and fueled by persistence. The grind never stopped: juggling night shifts, weekends, tutoring, EMT shifts, and interpreting roles just to afford books and rent.
I chose medicine because I want to change the healthcare narrative for families like mine—those who don’t get preventative care, who rely on home remedies and health fairs, who wait too long to see a doctor because copays are a luxury. I want to be the kind of doctor who makes medicine feel less like a transaction and more like trust. Because when Mr. Juan, an uninsured diabetic, came to the emergency department with a heavily bandaged leg after losing his foot to complications, what he really needed was someone who could explain what “HbA1c” meant and care that he'd gone too long without insulin.
That’s why I co-founded the IMR (Immigrant, Medically Underserved, and Refugee) Advocacy Group, a student-led organization where we connect with community clinics, serve as interpreters, organize health fairs, and build long-term solutions rooted in equity. We don’t do this for résumés. We do it because we’ve lived it. I’m not ashamed of my background. It’s taught me how to live with less and dream with more.
Financial tip? Before you pay someone to fix it, ask yourself: is there a YouTube tutorial for that? That’s how I made it to medical school, too—YouTubing how to study, how to apply, how to stay afloat. But more importantly: build community. That’s the best investment I’ve ever made. When your mother’s selling second-hand mugs or tamales to cover legal fees in hopes of gaining residency status and you’re riding a Greyhound bus wondering if your future is still possible, you learn to lean on others. And when you do, they show up with jackets, jobs, information, and kindness.
If you grant me this scholarship, you're not just easing a financial burden. You're fueling a mission of turning scarcity into service and hardship into hope. You’re investing in someone who has walked through immigration checkpoints, rugby scrums, emergency rooms, and classrooms asking the same question: how can my progress become our progress and pave a clearer path for those coming after me?
Thank you for considering my application. I may never be the loudest voice in the room, but I will always be the one making sure no one gets left behind. And yes—I’ll probably do it with grease on my hands, a borrowed stethoscope around my neck, and a torque wrench in the trunk. Because whether it’s spark plugs or systems, real change starts with a single turn and the resolve to keep going until it holds.