Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 29, Number 8, 1 ʻAukake 2012 — Road to medical school [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Road to medical school

By Mary Aliee Milham Under brilliant skies at Fairfield University, a small Jesuit university, Kekoa Taparra delivered his valedictory address. For Taparra, Kamehameha Schools Class of 2008, it is a new beginning into the world of cutting-edge cancer research. His next academic stop will be

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Taparra is beyond excited about the school's "translational" program in whieh Ph.D. candidates interact with M.D.s in the elinie and even with patients, for example, Alzheimer's patients, to get a real understanding of the various diseases about whieh they'U be searching for cures. "You're not just reading in a textbook, you're meeting people with these real diseases," said Taparra, whose cousin died of neuroblastoma at age 3. He also had two aunts who died of cancer within

the span of a year and the knowledge his grandmother shared that all six of her brothers had suffered from prostate cancer, one of whom it killed. It's hardly where he imagined he'd be back in his kolohe (rascal) C-student-from-Mililani days. His seemingly meteoric academic trajectory has actually been more of a zigzag - with lightening-bolt energy and sharp shifts - as evidenced

by his degree, a double major in molecular biology and psychology with minors in Asian studies, math and philosophy. Describing the journey that's brought him so far at age 21, Taparra is characteristically frenetic - jumping from his inspiring Kamehameha biology teacher Miss Ishimoto ("Miss Ish") to majoring in computer science, and setting seven school records as a freshman on Fairfield's swim team. At Fairfield, his path took sigSEE MEDICAL SCH00L "II PAGE 18

EDUGATI0N

CLAS5W 2012

The road to achieving an education is not always the same for everyone. Here, three students share their experiences leading up to graduation day. One, a valedictorian from a Connecticut university, plans a career in cancer medicine. Two others, meanwhile, overcame overwhelming challenges before graduating this summer from an alternative high school diploma program for at-risk teens and young adults. They are all part of the Class of 2012.

□ Follow us: twittencom/oha_hawaii | E Fan us: "Office of Hawaiian Affairs"

Kekoa Taparra will enter Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, in the fall. - Courtesy: Hiek Lacy

j MEDICAL SCH00L Continued from page 11

!nificant turns, while providing an extraordinarily well-rounded education. It also nurtured eompassion through international service missions in Belize, where he helped build a hurricane shelter. Fairfield also provided the eonneetion with an alumna that led to his current internship in Boston with Millennium, Japan's largest pharmaceutical company. Nevertheless, when asked how he got to this point, Taparra says: "Everything streams back to my parents." Tony Taparra, a senior supervisor for Hawaiian Electric Co., and Judy Wong Taparra, a Mililani High psychology teacher, called their son daily throughout his undergraduate education and supported him "24/7, my entire 21 years of life" and instilled him with "their morals,

their, not just 'ean do' - but 'I will do' - attitude." Classmates also helped develop his interests, exposing him to club meetings and activities; by the time he graduated, Taparra had joined more than 10 clubs. Averaging just four hours a night, he wrote sleep deprivation off as the Catch-22 of having many opportunities, adding "if you don't have the opportunities, you don't have any guide or sense of what you could do." Taparra strongly recommends Hawai'i students go away to college for the greater opportunities to be had on the continent. For him, even after growing up in the melting pot of Hawai'i, the cultural diversity he encountered on the East Coast was an enriching experience. While he missed his family, friends, the food and Hawai'i's sunny weather, going away magnified Taparra's appreciation of Hawaiian culture and "how mueh 'ohana really means ... and how

mueh our culture really ean be perpetuated because so many people, especially on the East Coast, don't know what that is." During his valedictory address, he shared with his class his Hawaiian values, learned as a child. And he said the education and experiences he received at Fairfield helped him to fully understand Hawaiian values. After Johns Hopkins, Taparra plans to spend a few years in aeademia and in cancer research. But his dream is to eventually return home. "I'd love to one day bring back a Johns Hopkins School of Medicine education and eome back to Hawai'i," he said. "I think that would really be the greatest thing." ■ Mary Aliee Kaiulani Milham, a Portland, Oregon-based freelance journalist, is a former newspaper reporter and columnist from California's Central Coast.

www.oha.org/kwo | kwo@OHA.org NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS I FEATURES I EVENTS