Today we’d like to introduce you to Simeon Carson Jr.
Simeon, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I’m a 24-year-old medical assistant at a cardiology clinic in downtown Los Angeles from Lawrenceville, Georgia. My journey starts about four years ago when I made a life-changing decision to move across the country to California and attend the University of Redlands, a small, private, liberal arts university. My discovery of this institution was led by a passion for competitive swimming. For which I was originally was scouted for. Moving across the country with little to no establishment served troublesome at first. I understood what I was getting myself into because the disjunction I had felt in the south longed and for something more. The four years I spent at the University of Redlands was faced with a lot of academic hardship with the balancing of organizational involvement on and off-campus, community service activities, a competitive swimmer’s schedule, and a job.
As my independence grew more as the years went by, I learned more and more about myself. I learned to love the being I was and to grow from every obstacle I was faced with. I came into the university as an unguided naïve individual and left a vibrant strong president of a Greek organization and non-Greek organizations with a BA in both Biology and Spanish with an overarching life goal to become a physician assistant. After graduation, I was faced with a fork in the road. My choices were to either go back to Georgia, where at this point, I was alienated or somehow stay in California. With no guidance whatsoever, the states were getting high because I was at a point where I had one month to somehow transplant to Los Angeles. Reluctantly, I managed to get a server/busser job in West Hollywood and found somewhere I could call home. While working fifty-hour week, I rigorously applied for a job that related to my passion for healthcare.
After serving/bussing the longest three months of my life I gained employment at a cardiology clinic as a medical assistant. Here I was reinsured where my love lied in healthcare, through complex day-to-day tasks of taking vitals, rooming, patient intakes, translating in Spanish for the doctor, and performing/assisting diagnostic procedures like stress echocardiograms. Performing these duties only amerced my passion for helping those who are ill or have nothing. Additionally, I lead the medical records department of the clinic. From recent statistics that were obtained, the production curated at the clinic is the same as an outpatient center of a hospital. Remarkably, this outcome is due to the output of a ten-person staff including me. My hunger hasn’t stopped there. While working at my current job I’ve found myself taking science courses at a local college, volunteering, and shadowing health care professionals. My interest hasn’t plateaued just yet, I also have found excitement in modeling. Who knows where this will lead me in the future but it will not deter me from one day becoming a physician assistant.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No, this entire journey has been the farthest thing from smooth. Coming from the heart of the rustbelt to California the culture shock really rocked my world. Growing up in the South in my adolescence was a very cussing time for me because additionally of being black, I am multiracial. I am mixed with African American and Mexican. Within my household I found myself jumping between sides of identification that both never really fit me. I was “too Mexican” for my black side and I was “too black” for my Mexican side. Luckily, I had my sibling to help soothe my unease, but it was never enough not being to confide these issues with my parents. Aside from that issue, looking from my present state to the South amplified my blackness without me really noticing until I was a bit older.
As a child, I remember not being able to play with other kids. I later overheard from parents that I wasn’t able to play with their kids because I was “their type of kid”, “bad influence” and “wasn’t like us”. I remember a time when my mother had given me a ring with my name engraved on it. I was so proud of it that I wore it to school the next day. To my unlinking, I was bullied for wearing the ring. I was punched in the shoulder and these other boys chanted painful names like “fag” “wussy” and “nigger”. Whipping, I just sunk in my seat deeper and deeper and dropped my ring on the floor. My bulling continued for a couple of weeks and when I mustered up the courage to tell an adult. The adult placed us in the same room and made us talk to one another. The boy lied completely, and I turned out to be in the wrong. Situations like this occurred less the older I became but also more subtle.
While at the University of Redlands I struggled a great deal to the point where I had felt flustered to a degree daily. My day to day schedule consisted of me being in the library studying at least six hours a day after every day of classes, in addition to my commitments. From complex topics to simple ones that were taught it had always taken me much more time and effort to understand. Upon graduation, I was finally was able to convince my parents to allow me to see a learning disability psychologist. Being a first-generation individual served very difficult on an array of issues throughout my life. It caused much confusion that resulted in neglection to issues. Since grade school, I was aware of my academic struggles, but I was told that “nothing is wrong with you” and thrown back and forth between remedial, normal, and advanced classes for different subjects.
My frustration only grew more as time progressed. Being able to see the learning disability psychologist was the salvation I had always asked for. After testing I was given the solution. I was told that I had a serve reading disability, dyslexia, and ADHD. The degree of my disability was high enough in the spectrum to the point where statically, someone with my condition would have dropped out by freshmen year of a university or would have not gone past seeking a high school degree. Knowing this information about myself gives me tremendous dignity because I went against the odds and surpassed it tremendously.
We’d love to hear more about your work.
I would say what makes me apart from the rest is a great deal of empathy and passion I have for individuals. I’m more than happy to go above and beyond to help someone. I realized this one day while at work when I waited with a patient well past my shift just to make sure they were safe, and transportation had picked them up. I’m able to take myself out of whatever current state I am and place myself in someone else’s viewpoint. I may agree or disagree with the perspective, but I utilize this to come up with a fair comprise of the situation. This is something very important because what is a healthcare provider without the care for the patient? In a simplistic way, you’re a scientist. These qualities are just for the environment of healthcare but in any.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
One memory in particular that I’ll always adore is the time my family and I had taken a trip to Destin, Florida when I was twelve years old. It was a sunny summer day and my family decided to have a beach day in the Gulf of Mexico. The coral-colored luminescent ocean was so intoxicating by the sheer smell of sea salt. My brother and I had a ball and played in the ocean for eight hours straight!
As we headed back to the hotel, I remembered feeling a weird type pinching soreness on my skin. Unsure with this sensation I questioned my mom what I was this feeling. She pointed to my little brother and said, “You and your brother are brunt tomatoes”. Puzzled by my mother’s statement my brother and I looked at one another and realized we were both sunburnt! We both laughed until we found ourselves gasping for air. Never in our lives had we experienced being sunburnt until that day. After catching our breath, we helped to apply aloe to one another. Only to find ourselves laughing hysterically because we looked like a couple of good up burnt coconuts.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
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