An Uncharted Route… A World to Move

When we’re young and someone asks us what we want to be when we grow up, the answer often seems simple. On career days at school, some kids dressed up as police officers, firefighters, or teachers. I dressed up as a doctor.

For a long time, I was certain that medicine would be my path. It had always fascinated me, but it also became deeply personal. Both of my grandparents battled cancer, and I often wished I had known more; enough to somehow help them through that journey. Losing them was one of those obstacles that changed my path; the kind one never chooses and that, however painful; teach you that moving forward doesn’t mean forgetting, but rather turning those situations into the motivation to keep going.

As I grew older, I realized that knowing what you want doesn’t mean the path to get there will look the way you imagined. I was still passionate about medicine, but I also understood the long and demanding journey it required. That was when I realized that before I could think about moving the world, I first had to be brave enough to create my own path.

That path led me somewhere I had never imagined as a child: Biomedical Engineering.

I discovered that helping a patient doesn’t always mean being the person in the exam room. It can also mean developing a device that gives someone a second chance or creating technology that detects a disease before it’s too late. Behind every medical device are engineers who may never meet the patients they help, yet still become part of their stories.

Along the way, my path crossed with other future engineers whom I’m now fortunate to call friends. We’ve shared projects, frustrations, challenges, and accomplishments. Even though graduation may take us in different directions, I love the idea that one day we’ll look back and realize that together, we took our first steps toward moving the world; each in our own way.

The Polytechnic also taught me that building your path doesn’t happen only inside a classroom. Life may close doors, but after all, great buildings have plenty of windows.

One of those windows gave me the opportunity to experience the medical device industry firsthand. This summer, two more opened when I had the opportunity to rotate with Dr. Gabriela Rivera, an obstetrician-gynecologist, and Dr. Dencel García, an orthopedic surgeon.

It was in the operating room that both of my worlds truly came together.

As I watched a physician use a medical device, I found myself thinking about everyone behind its design, manufacturing, and development. I could imagine myself in that room as a doctor, but I could also see myself as one of the engineers who helped make those tools possible.

That’s when I realized something: maybe I never had to choose between wanting to help patients and wanting to be an engineer. There can be many paths to the same purpose.

My grandparents won’t be physically present on my graduation day, but I know they’ll be part of everything that moment means to me. At the end of this chapter, I’ll be Engineer Sánchez, but my journey doesn’t have to end there.

Maybe I’ll pursue a master’s degree. Maybe I’ll return to that childhood dream and one day become Dr. Sánchez, too. Or maybe life will surprise me with a path I haven’t discovered yet.

Because before I could move the world, I had to understand that I did not need to have my path perfectly mapped out. I simply needed to dare to keep building it.

By: Mariángel Sánchez
Vice President of the PUPR Student Council and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) | Biomedical Engineering Student, 4th Year