Roshan George
Year: Junior
Hometown: Born in India and moved to NYC at age 7. Graduated from high school in Midlothian, Va.
Major: Biomedical Engineering
Career goal: To one day become a doctor
‘I choose VCU’
“I want to be a doctor. That has been my motivation ever since childhood. So [when I was looking at colleges], my parents gave me the option. They said this was not their decision; it’s mine. I had a choice and I decided to choose VCU for one main reason: diversity and the social aspects.
“Every day, when I look around, I really appreciate why I’m here at VCU.”
“My four years of undergrad I think are very important for me, personally, as a student growing up because I think those four years will define who I am for a lifetime. And that is something I realized coming to VCU. My best friend is Muslim, of Islamic origin. I’m Catholic myself … That’s one of the reasons why every day, when I look around, I really appreciate why I’m here at VCU.”
The ‘what if’ factor
“I like to take the ‘what if’ away. Give it my 100 percent. Yeah, I’m sacrificing a little bit more for school time compared to, like, hanging out or even running track. Right now, I’m redshirting the track team. But I think some things are definitely more important to me than others. Track was something that won’t define who I am. It’s medical school.”
‘I have to keep going’
“When I run, usually I like to forget about everything else. That’s the reason I run. That’s my alleviation. I can forget about school … I go all around campus. I start off on Cary Street, then I go up Belvidere, go across on to West Broad Street and go up Harrison Street. And I do that two or three times. It’s on campus so I’m constantly seeing people I know and it’s fun to see people around, you know. You say ‘what’s up’ to your friends. Other than running, I do biking.”
Changing lives
“I was walking through the Commons and I saw a flier sitting on the floor and the flier was basically saying, ’Do you want to do something with your life? You should do Alternative Spring Break.’ I was, like, ‘OK, what is this?’ I go to talk with the honors counselor, my adviser, and she says this is one great organization.
“So 50 students, me included, went down to New Orleans, and I will tell you, it was nothing of what I expected.
“The first step we did was go into the houses and demuck them. We destroyed the houses and kept their mainframes. And we did that with 50 VCU students – we did one entire house in eight hours. So we saved that family $5,000 in eight hours of our time.
“You know, I helped those people first handedly. I changed their lives first handedly. That’s exactly what I want to do as a doctor. I want to help people first handedly. I want to change their lives.”
