Pre-Medicine Track - Medical Biology, BS

“It was midday as the heat of the sun relentlessly beat down on us. I was with a team of volunteers in Guatemala, one of four Partners in Development service locations. As we worked on the rock foundation of an emergency shelter for a family, sweat poured from my brow. My forearms ached and twitched from hours of throwing rocks and carrying cinder blocks.

Working harder than some of my American companions was a local Guatemalan child named Marcos. Marcos, malnourished, weighing no more than forty pounds, could not pick up a cinder block alone. Instead he would have me place a block on his back, which he would carry over to the foundation that we were building for his home. Every time he came back to the pile, he would turn around and slap the back of his dirt-stained t-shirt, telling me he was ready for another block. He would carry his block to the foundation and I would follow with mine. When we dropped off our payload, Marcos would look up at me with his bright brown eyes and crooked smile. His tiny arms would reach up to me and I would carry him back to the pile. 

Marcos was so small that when I gripped his two wrists, I felt nothing but bone. I could not help but admire his determination as I placed another block on his back and watched him walk away. I did not want him to get hurt, but then it happened. He tripped and fell. Forty pounds does not hold up well against a cinder block. My heart dropped and I felt fear and helplessness throughout my body. I yelled, “Clínica! Clínica!” I ran over to the group surrounding Marcos and insisted that I bring him to the clinic. I scooped him up and started walking toward the clinic along a poorly maintained rocky road. I looked down at his wound and there was a chunk missing from his tiny wrist, so deep that I could see his bone. He continued to tell me that he was fine, almost as though he was consoling me as I attempted to comfort him. While I was carrying him, he kept tapping my arm and insisting that I put him down. As we arrived at the clinic, the staff rushed out to help Marcos. It became clear that Marcos was going to be fine, just as he had said two miles before. 

This was one of many experiences that helped shape and prepare me for medical school. My name is Robert Michaud, but many people call me Bobby, and now some have given me the nickname Dr. Bob. I graduated from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine in 2014 with my bachelors in biology and my bachelors in psychology. I spent the next couple years continuing my work with SJCME in a variety of roles including work as a lab instructor and as a teaching assistant for an environmental science semester. In 2016 I got married to Mary Rose Becker (SJCME ‘15) and we later welcomed our son Philip into the world in 2021. We started my medical school journey in the fall of 2016 at Tufts University School of Medicine where I would earn my medical degree and masters of public health. I joined Tufts as part of their Maine Track program. In 2020 I would return to Guatemala with SJCME students as a medical student and see Marcos again, now a 13 year old young man with a small scar on wrist, for one of my most impactful moments in my life. Saint Joseph’s has changed my life and set me on a trajectory to earn my medical degree and a career of healing. 

Almost exactly 10 years after carrying Marcos to the clinic in Guatemala, I was carrying another young boy named Pedro back from the clinic to his house, not as the observer, but as his doctor, his healer. I returned to Guatemala with SJCME this year as a board certified internal medicine physician to offer healing to the beautiful people who inspired me to embark on my journey to medicine. Without the service focused education I received at Saint Joseph’s college of Maine, I wouldn’t be the physician, husband, and father I am today. Thank you to my professors and community members from Saint Joseph’s who made this journey possible. I will never forget my blessings from Saint Joseph’s College of Maine.”