Thomas Dyminski

I'd lived in Oxford for 5 years before going to college. When initially applying for colleges, I didn't even send an application to UM. A few days before the scholarships deadline for UM I decided to make an application "just in case" and toured UM to serve as a baseline to compare the other schools I toured to it with. I never had the magic moment like a lot of other people did, no school did that for me. I chose UM because it was the school that, in it's tour and general attitude, felt like it wanted me to be a student there and succeed at it, not just allow me to be one like I'd felt elsewhere. I was a little unsure of my choice going into my first semester but being a student at UM is what really made me love it. Slowly uncovering all the opportunities, the school really had to offer rather than one magic moment or something on a brochure.

I initially applied as an electrical engineering major. Before stepping foot on campus, I changed my major to psychology because during my senior year of high school I'd exhausted all the math classes my school had to offer so I didn't take a math that year and was very happy to not do so. During the second semester of freshman year however, I realized that, if I stayed on the path I was, I wouldn't taking the same quantity of hard sciences after sophomore year. Because of the quality and genuinely positive experiences I had in the hard sciences classes here at Ole Miss, I wanted to stay in the departments and have classes with the phenomenal professors into my senior year. I particularly enjoyed my chemistry classes so I changed my major to chemistry with a minor in biology. The department truly made me fall in love with the subject and I see my future involving it.

I feel like I'm wanted here and I feel like I'm encouraged to succeed. Walking into Coulter Hall and seeing accomplishments flash by on the big screens pushes that narrative. They give you every resource you need to do your best and once you do your best, they want to brag about it for you. That attitude follows into the students, especially upperclassmen who truly feel like they want you to succeed.

1. Professors. You can tell they really like their jobs, enjoy their research, and want students to succeed.

2. Opportunities. If there's something you want to do, you'll be supported in doing it. The department loves to show off all the cool things it's students do and they'll help you be apart of that list.

3. Other students. I've had great experiences with other students in the department and adjacent ones. SMACS (Student Members of the American Chemical Society) is a prime example of this and a great group of people within the department to just be friends with but also to ask an upperclassmen important questions.

Dr. Ritchie has had a massive impact on me and my life. He taught the honors sections of general chemistry that I took and having him be my first real introduction into the field is one of the best things to happen to me from a professional standpoint. His passion and energy for the subject was infectious. His class is what made me want to be a chemistry major and continue taking classes like it.

I think one of the best few weeks of my college experience so far was playing in the pit for the university's production of Into the Woods. I'm a violist and wound up being a part of the orchestra for the theatre department's mainstage show of that semester. It was so incredibly busy, I'd be physically exhausted by intermission, and during dress rehearsal I remember cramming in study time for a biology exam between musical numbers, but I absolutely loved the experience. That was one of the times it clicked how interconnected the UM community was. Seeing all these different performers, musicians, and stage crew members working together to put a show on was something else. I was even more surprised by how many people weren't even majoring in the arts, myself included, and were involved simply because they wanted to be. This school will allow you to do everything and anything you want to do. You won't be forced into a certain box or path.

I hope to attend a dual degree MD-PhD program, spending time in medical school and graduate school to obtain the necessary skills to be a physician-scientist. My career goals are to run a lab associated with a medical school or teaching hospital, spending my time in research, teaching students, and treating patients to push the science of medicine forward.