When medicine chooses you
Fourth-year medical student Meriem Mokhtech realizes her dreams with help from Goodman and Waters scholarships
Pictured above: Medical student Meriem Mokhtech (left) is pictured with scholarship donor Shelley Waters at the scholarship luncheon in April 2016.
Meriem Mokhtech, MS4
Dec. 11, 2017 — Fourth-year UF medical student Meriem Mokhtech feels her future as a radiation oncologist was written in the stars.
“Medicine chooses you, no matter what anyone says to dissuade you or push you in another direction,” she says. “Once you get the itch, you have to do it.”
Mokhtech reaches ever closer to her dream career with support from the Dr. Stephen and Shelley Waters Scholarship and the Lawrence M. Goodman Scholarship. She says the financial support has allowed her to pursue a career path she’s dreamed of since high school.
“Receiving these two scholarships made it possible for me to attend the UF College of Medicine in the first place,” she says. “I wanted to stay home at UF after receiving my bachelor’s degree, but there were a lot of enticing offers elsewhere. Once the Goodman and Waters scholarships came in, I was convinced I was staying here.”
Mokhtech developed an interest in oncology as a teen. When she was 19, her grandmother was diagnosed with stage four cancer. Within weeks of the diagnosis, her grandmother passed away.
“Despite having seven doctors in my family, there was nothing anyone could do. That’s when I realized the deep impact a cancer diagnosis can have on a family,” she says. “I want to do what I can to help other families on that journey. I want to be a healer, in particular an oncologist.”
With her research recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Oncology, Mokhtech is already making headway in her field. After she graduates from medical school this spring, she plans to begin a competitive, five-year radiation oncology residency. She says she’s attracted to the unrelenting innovation of the specialty.
Learn about the Waters Scholarship
“It’s a unique field. You get to intervene and treat cancer with surgical-like precision,” she says. “It’s growing rapidly, and we’re constantly able to provide more targeted therapies with minimized side effects.”
Mokhtech credits UF Health Proton Therapy Institute medical director Nancy Mendenhall, M.D., with teaching a lesson that she couldn’t learn from any textbook. Mokhtech shadowed Mendenhall just before beginning medical school.
“She always preaches the idea of supporting our colleagues throughout our journeys. Medicine can have a bad reputation in that it may be a difficult field to enter into. We combat that notion by helping and elevating each other,” she says.
Meriem Mokhtech poses with donor Shelley Waters and fellow scholarship recipient Chris Henson at the 2016 George Harrell Club dinner, where donors and students gathered to celebrate philanthropy in medical education.
Photo by Jesse S. Jones
As an ambassador for the UF College of Medicine admissions welcoming committee, Mokhtech ensures new classes of medical students are introduced to the same warm and inviting environment she’s called home over the last four years.
“I tell the students, the UF College of Medicine is a place where students can feel happy and supported,” she says.
Mokhtech recalls receiving her stethoscope during a first-year orientation ceremony as a seminal moment in her burgeoning career, a harbinger of what was to come.
“I remember seeing the little Gator emblem engraved on my stethoscope for the first time,” she says. “When I’m traveling, I always have my stethoscope with me, and I’m reminded where I came from and where I’m going.”
