Olentangy Liberty’s Gu is determined to excel

Amanda Gu

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Amanda Gu is not your typ­i­cal high school senior. Unlike most, she finds dis­eased organs inter­est­ing. But then not every senior is con­tem­plat­ing a career in medicine.

Amanda, an Olen­tangy Lib­erty stu­dent, devel­oped her inter­est in becom­ing a doc­tor the sum­mer before her sopho­more year when she attended an anatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy camp at Wright State Uni­ver­sity. It was then that she had her first taste of med­i­cine and was able to work on two human cadavers.

She is one of 50 who will be inter­viewed for the Uni­ver­sity of Pittsburgh’s guar­an­teed med­ical pro­gram. Only 10 will be accepted. Amanda’s inter­view will be over spring break.

She is also wait­ing on finan­cial deci­sions from Yale and Har­vard. While she is con­tem­plat­ing becom­ing either a sur­geon or radi­ol­o­gist, there are so many direc­tions she could go, she admits it is too early to say what her final med­ical spe­cialty will be.

She spoke excit­edly about a recent shadow expe­ri­ence with an anes­the­si­ol­o­gist where, while on the mater­nity ward, she was able to observe an epidural, spinal tap and C-section.

Mov­ing to cen­tral Ohio from Con­necti­cut when she was in the fourth grade, Amanda said if she stays in Amer­ica, she would like to live in the north­east as she is a fan of the cold and snow.

“I like the cold weather. I like the east coast, she said. But then she also likes the idea of liv­ing in Eng­land. “It all started with Harry Potter.”

Hav­ing vis­ited there once, she hopes to become immersed in the intel­lec­tual aspects the coun­try offers and is hop­ing to do a work study there.

She admits that while senior year is excit­ing, she is ready to leave for col­lege and try new things.

This year she is busy not only with course­work, but also with vol­un­teer work and other activities.

“I’m doing a lot more with vol­un­teer­ing at the zoo,” Amanda said. As a ZooAide, she inter­views for new vol­un­teers, and inter­viewed more than 100 peo­ple last year. She has put in 200 hours of ser­vice at the zoo, she said.

She is also a camp coun­selor for the Ohio Lead­er­ship Insti­tute Train­ing Camp for mid­dle school and will soon begin train­ing to be a candy striper at a cen­tral Ohio hospital.

Hav­ing just turned 17 in Jan­u­ary and just begin­ning to drive, Amanda said trans­porta­tion for vol­un­teer work has been an issue, so she is not in that many clubs.

But she has run cross coun­try since 7th grade and noted that while it appears to be an indi­vid­ual sport, that the 72 girls worked well as a team.

“We really bonded,” she said, adding all of her friends have been run­ning with her for the past sev­eral years.

Music is an addi­tional area where Amanda excels. She has played piano since age 6 and still takes lessons today. She also plays vio­lin, which she began in the fourth grade, in the orchestra.

For the com­ing sum­mer, Amanda expects to get expe­ri­ence at the local hos­pi­tal and con­tinue work­ing as an intern in her par­ents’ phar­ma­col­ogy lab at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity where she has been work­ing for sev­eral years.

Leav­ing for col­lege may be a bit hard, she said, as she is not used to being away. But she did spend a month in China with grand­par­ents, she said, where she went to Chi­nese sum­mer camps.

“It’s cool to be immersed in their cul­ture,” she said. Amanda said some of their views about Amer­ica are “pretty hilar­i­ous” such as there is no home­work after school, only shop­ping and parties.

Molly Pen­rod, sci­ence teacher at Lib­erty, has had Amanda in both hon­ors biol­ogy and advanced place­ment biology.

“Amanda’s list of accom­plish­ments is incred­i­bly impres­sive. Her ded­i­ca­tion to aca­d­e­mics has resulted in soar­ing stan­dard­ized test scores and var­i­ous aca­d­e­mic awards and hon­ors. She is flu­ent in Chi­nese and Eng­lish, thus pub­lish­ing arti­cles in a lead­ing Chi­nese news­pa­per and com­pet­ing in var­i­ous Chi­nese essay and cul­ture com­pe­ti­tions. She has par­tic­i­pated in a plethora of sum­mer camps in the United States and China to learn about physics, basics of engi­neer­ing, anatomy and phys­i­ol­ogy, lead­er­ship skills and Chi­nese cul­ture among oth­ers. It is clear that Amanda has made a clear com­mit­ment to her aca­d­e­mic respon­si­bil­i­ties while mak­ing time to give back to her com­mu­nity. I am hon­estly not sure how she does it all while main­tain­ing her calm, con­fi­dent com­po­sure each day,” Pen­rod said.

“She has shown evi­dence of being a very strong leader as well as being a sin­cere, mature and extra­or­di­nar­ily respon­si­ble stu­dent. Amanda pos­sesses the abil­ity to see into her future and delib­er­ately pre­pares for it. She makes daily deci­sions based on the impact it will have on her future. That is an extremely rare, and mature, way of think­ing. I believe Amanda’s deter­mi­na­tion to suc­ceed will help her to thrive at the col­le­giate level and beyond. I look for­ward to hear­ing about the great things Amanda will do in her life. She is extra­or­di­nar­ily talented.”

Amanda offers the fol­low­ing advice to those com­ing up in high school.

“Don’t be afraid to take a chance,” she said. Some courses might seem too daunt­ing, but “if you try hard enough, you will suc­ceed. And you may find it more inter­est­ing and eas­ier than you thought.”

She found this true her­self when, in her junior year, she took advanced place­ment biol­ogy, chem­istry, eco­nom­ics, sta­tis­tics, cal­cu­lus and literature.

This year is a much lighter load, she said with a smile, she is only tak­ing four AP courses — gov­ern­ment, cal­cu­lus, comp and physics in addi­tion to anatomy and strings.

“Amanda is a very con­sci­en­tious stu­dent, always engaged and deter­mined to excel in what­ever she has cho­sen to pur­sue, said social stud­ies teacher Doug Wiles.

She is a quiet leader, set­ting an exam­ple for other stu­dents through model behav­ior and actions. Amanda will likely choose a chal­leng­ing career and strive to be the best in that field. She is a plea­sure to have in class,” Wiles said.

For now, Amanda is look­ing ahead to the next eight years in school, with another four in residency.

Amanda is the daugh­ter of Dawn Han and Howard Gu of Powell.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Feb 10 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.