EXPLO Senior Interview with Sankalp from Massachusetts
Sankalp is a fourteen year old student who is dedicated to becoming a doctor to make improvements in the medical field in order to save lives.
I’ve been coming to EXPLO for the last three years and it has been pretty amazing, so I decided to come back for one more year. At home, there’s just one group of people and there isn’t a lot of diversity. At EXPLO, there are so many cultures, like the Chinese, Indian, Venezuelan, etc. You also meet people from different parts of the US.
What I like about EXPLO is that you get to have some real world experience and try out what you imagine your future to be like. For example, I want to be a doctor so I took Medical Careers course. We got to participate in the EXPLO clinic where we had patients who we diagnosed and then healed them. I’ve learned that it’s very hard, but with some effort and dedication you can become a doctor. I want to be a surgeon but I’m not sure yet what type of surgeon - there’s neurosurgeon, orthopedic surgeon, heart surgeon, etc. I want to help people. My grandfather passed away because the doctors didn’t do the surgery properly. I want to see how everything works and how can I make advancements in the medical field in order to make sure that things like this never happen again.
EXPLO has given me the opportunity to meet new people from different places, but it has also taught me to keep bonds with friends. I still keep in touch with people I met when I went to EXPLO the first time. Every year there’s something new, but the first year is probably the hardest because I didn’t know anyone. Second year I knew some people, but there were a lot of new people as well. As you go on, you start to get into the flow of things - meeting new people, making friends. I’m going to miss the entire community of EXPLO, the diversity of it and all the different personalities of each person that make it up. I think it’s important to walk up to someone who looks a little lonely, because you never know if they could be a nice person or not. But you have a chance to make a friend there.
