Liberty’s Wang on path to saving lives

Oliver Wang

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

While he is con­sid­er­ing a career as a heart sur­geon, Oliver Wang may ulti­mately seek another way to save lives. His dream is to some­day open a clinic in a loca­tion where vac­ci­na­tions save lives.

“It’s a dif­fer­ent kind of thing,” he said on the impact of sav­ing lives through a clinic as com­pared to being a surgeon.

Dur­ing a visit to China in 2011, Oliver was able to “do some­thing pro­duc­tive” in his father’s home­town for nearly three weeks by fol­low­ing an inter­nal spe­cial­ist in a local hospital.

“It’s way dif­fer­ent than here. It reaf­firmed the idea and got me think­ing about global health,” he said.

Oliver also hopes to visit South Amer­ica and pos­si­bly open a clinic there.

“It’s so for­eign to me, impov­er­ished,” he said, adding he would like to help with a med­ical pro­gram there.

But for now, the Olen­tangy Lib­erty High School senior is excited and anx­ious about his future. He has already been accepted to both Ohio State Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, but is wait­ing to hear from his dream schools — Stan­ford and Har­vard universities.

Oliver vis­ited Stan­ford in Cal­i­for­nia last summer.

“It was amaz­ing,” he said. He also vis­ited Boston and Har­vard. “I’ve always liked that sort of com­pet­i­tive­ness. I also liked Boston; it’s beau­ti­ful. I want to expe­ri­ence some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’ve been here my whole life.”

Oliver is not sure just when he began think­ing of med­i­cine; he chose the sci­ence field in his career pass­port this year. But he hap­pened to come across a test he took on careers in third grade in which he wrote that he wanted to be an ani­mal scientist.

“Some­how that mor­phed,” he said.

He began think­ing of becom­ing a car­diac sur­geon when an uncle recently passed away from a heart prob­lem. A prob­lem, his father told him, that runs in the family.

He had con­sid­ered bio-med engi­neer­ing. Tying this in with a med­ical back­ground, he said would be “this per­fect harmony.”

With nine advanced place­ment courses last year and an addi­tional six this year, he is the quin­tes­sen­tial stu­dent with classes over the last two years in cal­cu­lus, micro­eco­nom­ics, macro­eco­nom­ics, music the­ory, biol­ogy, U.S. his­tory, chem­istry, sta­tis­tics and lit­er­a­ture and com­po­si­tion, physics, U.S. gov­ern­ment, Euro­pean his­tory, lan­guage and com­po­si­tion, psy­chol­ogy and art his­tory. He is also tak­ing orchestra.

He mused that art his­tory is more fas­ci­nat­ing than he thought it would be and noted that much of the course­work was not as demand­ing as one might think, mostly because the courses are inter­est­ing to him.

Liz Golowen­ski, chem­istry teacher at Lib­erty, spoke glow­ingly of Oliver. She said that he “has been a ter­rific per­son to get to know. He is highly intel­li­gent but not arro­gant, strongly com­pas­sion­ate but not sappy, and diverse in atti­tudes and abil­i­ties with­out being shal­low. His range of knowl­edge is very broad. He is able to suc­cess­fully com­plete chem­i­cal titra­tion cal­cu­la­tions and a most dif­fi­cult Chopin sonata. Oliver is a inte­gral part of the envi­ron­men­tal club that has pro­moted a highly effec­tive elec­tron­ics recy­cling pro­gram this year.”

David Hale is a math teacher at the high school.

“Oliver was a junior in my AP Cal­cu­lus BC class last year. He was a hard worker who would help oth­ers if they didn’t under­stand cer­tain con­cepts. He vol­un­teered to do after-school tutor­ing in math with stu­dents who needed help both last year and this year. He is a great kid who is always polite and respect­ful. He is a great rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Lib­erty High School,” Hale said.

While sci­ence may be the career path that Oliver fol­lows, music is a major com­po­nent in his life. He began tak­ing piano lessons at “around 5 or 6 years old” and began play­ing strings in the fourth grade with the school program.

He plays piano on a weekly basis with a friend play­ing viola at Wor­thing­ton Chris­t­ian Village.

The same peo­ple come each week to hear them play the mainly clas­si­cal pro­grams, he said.

“One woman closes her eyes and nods her head to the music,” he said smiling.

“It’s so great to see,” he said. “Sci­ence doesn’t do some­thing like that.”

Oliver also per­forms in school groups and has gar­nered numer­ous awards over the years.

Play­ing ten­nis other years, he had to drop the sport this year to focus on a pub­lic affairs class he is tak­ing at OSU.

“It sup­ple­ments what I learn in AP gov­ern­ment,” he said, adding he also gets to meet oth­ers from around cen­tral Ohio. An intern­ship is included in the pro­gram where Oliver is work­ing with United Way of Delaware County.

He said he does basic office work in addi­tion to work­ing to cre­ate a pro­gram for the edu­ca­tion mission.

“I get to learn so much about Delaware County,” he said.

Oliver also vol­un­teers at River­side Methodist Hos­pi­tal. He hopes to have 500 hours by the end of sum­mer; he has 430 hours now. He helps at the infor­ma­tion desks, helps with some dis­charges and does other odd jobs as well.

Among numer­ous other activ­i­ties he jug­gles, he is also trea­surer of the school’s ser­vice club, orga­niz­ing a dance marathon set for early in April, which will raise funds for pedi­atric can­cer research. In the short term, he will be vis­it­ing Chicago over spring break and looks for­ward to vis­it­ing the Chicago Insti­tute of Art.

In his spare time, Oliver plays in ping pong tour­na­ments with his sis­ter, enjoys movies and likes to eat ice cream, hav­ing worked in an ice cream shop since last summer.

“I’ve tried every fla­vor twice,” he said.

He expects he will be work­ing there again this summer.

With all the courses and activ­i­ties that he has suc­cess­fully under­taken, Oliver advises oth­ers, “Don’t be scared. It may seem like a lot, but if you try and really like it, it won’t be a problem.”

Oliver is the son of June Wang Wang and Justin Wang of Powell.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Mar 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.