It’s impressive in a small town like Humboldt, Kansas, where the pinnacle institutions of higher education are thought to be K-State and KU, to find a high-schooler whose horizons are a great deal broader, and whose biography has already put him in contact with two of this country’s elite universities.
The summer after his sophomore year Noah Johnson was invited to attend a leadership program at the University of California-Berkeley. The program was intended for teens interested in pursuing a career in medicine. It combined lectures and group study with hands-on fieldwork at an area hospital. Last month the incoming HHS senior completed a similar program, this time in “advanced medicine,” at Johns Hopkins.
JOHNSON — a straight-A student, whose warmth, intelligence and self-possession would seem beyond his 17 years — exhibited an early interest in science, which, by the time he had entered high school, had matured into a passion for medicine.
Johnson’s first notion was to become a surgeon. Fired by a steady diet of TV’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “House,” not to mention an ever-increasing passion for the study of biology, Johnson attacked his schoolwork with the vigor of someone who would someday have to pass the MCAT.
But Johnson was not one to confuse a TV doctor for the real thing. To be certain of his career choice, he needed to see up-close what the worklife of a surgeon actually entailed. And so, the summer before last, he set out for California.
“The whole point of the San Francisco trip,” recalled Johnson, who was either born with a level head or grew into it, “was to discover what my purpose in medicine is. I didn’t want to be totally unsure when I went to college, and have to shift plans midway.”
It was a wise move. Early in his stay, after viewing two surgeries — which were livestreamed into an auditorium where he watched with 300 of his peers — Johnson decided that surgery wasn’t for him. But not for the usual reasons; he wasn’t made at all squeamish by the red slices of flesh or pooling blood that gross out most mortals. In fact, he recalled with a sort of sang-froid the moment when, during an invasive knee surgery, the doctor “picked up a mallet and had to hammer some stuff into place.”
What Johnson was rejecting, rather, was the job’s potential tedium. “They do multiple surgeries every day,” he said, “and usually the same kind of surgery. I thought it was interesting, but I couldn’t see myself doing it, not every day, not for a lifetime. It just wasn’t my purpose.”
As his interest in operative medicine waned, however, Johnson — inspired by the many speakers he witnessed during the rest of his California trip — developed a new enthusiasm for medical research. He recalled being especially fascinated by one researcher who waxed eloquent about the importance of “good bacteria.” A graphic example that stood out for Johnson was a discussion of a relatively new procedure known as “fecal transplant.” Fecal transplant is exactly what it sounds like. The fecal bacteria from a healthy person is transferred, usually by a professional, into a less well-off patient in the hopes of restoring in the ailing recipient a healthier gastrointestinal environment.
“At that point, I started going down the road of wanting to do research,” said Johnson. “I was just more interested in what was happening behind the scenes.”
And so that was his plan when he boarded the plane back to Kansas.
AT THE START of his junior year, however, Johnson’s high school counselor pointed his class toward an online careers program which, in addition to cataloging for students a list of potential jobs and their average salaries, provided an aptitude test intended to match students with the careers for which they were best suited.
Unsurprisingly, the program said Johnson would make a good doctor. But it also suggested he think about nursing.
“I’d never really considered it before,” said Johnson, “but when I clicked on nursing, I saw how good of a job it could be, how many options there were. The pay is good and you can help a lot of people.”
