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Niall-Conor Garcia |
You won’t find too many students aiming to go straight from
a community college to medical school. But not too many community college students
are like Niall-Conor Garcia.
The Cuyamaca College scholar already has a bachelor’s degree
in music from the University of Southern California and recently secured a
master’s degree in professional composition and orchestration through an online
program offered by the University of Chichester in Sussex, England. He’s even tried
his hand at musical theater and wrote the soundtrack for a few independent
films.
These days, though, Garcia is wrapping up the last of
several science courses needed to enroll in medical school and embark on a new career
as an emergency room physician.
“He’s a Renaissance man,” said Cuyamaca College Chemistry
Professor Laurie LeBlanc.
“It’s been a somewhat serpentine journey,” said Garcia, 30.
The journey began in Lemon Grove, where Garcia grew up, then
led to Walnut Hill High School for the Arts, a private, arts-focused boarding
school in Natick, Mass., which he attended to hone his music composition skills
before enrolling at USC in the hopes of a career scoring films. But after
earning a bachelor’s degree, Garcia began to sour on the industry. Employment was
intermittent. Jobs were temporary.
“It’s very difficult to get steady work in this field,” he
said. “I was working too hard to not be doing something better with myself.”
So Garcia went with Plan B.
“Medical school was always something in the back of my
mind,” Garcia said. “I had always thought, if not music, then medicine.”
Garcia returned to the East County and in 2014 began taking
classes at Cuyamaca and Grossmont colleges to complete the prerequisite science
courses needed to reach his new goal of becoming an emergency room physician.
(He will earn an associate degree in science from Cuyamaca this fall.)
Although he continued to complete the master’s program from
the University of Chichester’s music school, Garcia’s mind remained set on medicine.
He did well on his Medical College Admission Test and is hoping to enroll in
the fall of 2018 at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences’
Medical School, which is run by the federal government and whose primary
mission is to prepare graduates to as military doctors. In exchange for the
government covering his medical school tuition, Garcia will commit to serving several
years as an Army or Navy physician.
Garcia said Cuyamaca and Grossmont colleges have been vital
in his journey.
“I can’t speak about biology programs at large universities,
but I hear a lot about students struggling to have an audience with their
professors,” said Garcia, who works part time as a Cuyamaca College chemistry lab
technician. “Here, that is not an issue. They’re engaged with their students.
You ask a professor a question, and they answer you. They want to help you.
They want you to succeed. But beside all that, it is a very rigorous program.
It is not easy, but the faculty here will do everything to make sure you reach
your goal.”
Violeta Casillas, Garcia’s lab tech supervisor at Cuyamaca
College, is among his biggest fans.
“He’s going to school here while finishing up his master’s
degree, he’s working as a lab tech, and now he’s applying to medical school,”
Casillas said. “He’s doing it all. What more can you say?”
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