Biomedical Engineering Major
Class of 2023
UOP Student Athletes In Healthcare 2019 – 2021
UOP PSAAC (DEI Chair) 2020 – Present
WCC DEI (UOP Representative) 2020 – Present
UOP NSBE, Stockton (CA President) 2020
“Things work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out.” – John Wooded
*Transcript Was Computer Generated*
uh so my name is jd allen my major is
biomedical engineering
i am a forward specifically the nine on
the women’s soccer team
and i’m not local i’m actually from
southern california uh temecula to be
specific
quite enjoy it there but
um yeah that’s pretty much about me also
i’m a third year so this is my going
into my fourth this fall and the end of
our spring season is coming up so
that’ll be the completion of my third
year and
yeah that’s about it on the background i
believe
that’s how cool thank you so much for
sharing jane i i really appreciate your
time
can you tell me a little bit why about
why you decided to come to ulp
yeah so uh
particularly soccer was a huge one i
know i went to play
d1
so it was all about the schools that are
reaching out to me where could i see
myself i knew i wanted to stay in
california
the weather is kind of unbeatable here
even though it’s kind of rainy today
usually it’s nice and warm so i knew i
wanted to stay not too far from my
parents just in case
and then also
major was super important i’ve kind of
had this idea of what i wanted to do
with my career for a hot minute so
making sure that they had something that
will kind of feed me into that medical
field was really important for me
but yeah overall i think the recruiting
process was number one how
the coach’s approaches approached me at
the time
i was a sophomore
going into sophomore year of high school
and so i was just really excited to come
and play and
um you know they gave their spill they
talked about uh pacific and it turns out
that my cousin had actually gone here
before
so that was that was really nice we
never ended up crossing paths she’s a
bit older than me but um just having
that connection is pretty good so when
you cross paths did you have an idea
what the campus would be like here
because of that um
i didn’t really get to ask her before
the coaches kind of brought me up and i
did my unofficial and i honestly i love
the campus i think it’s really beautiful
it’s small that was also another big
factor i think something about pacific
that i really liked was the size
in addition to the campus and their
soccer program
having an environment where
i can
have clear communication with my
professors and my coaches if need be and
just
to have those interpersonal connections
with the people that you see on a
day-to-day was very important to me so i
think that was a good thing and then i
do love the campus i got to see it on a
couple of visits and a few games that i
came to see so that was good that’s
excellent have you ever been involved
with the bss as well
um i haven’t really had the opportunity
as much
uh over coven it was a little bit easier
to like attend a few zooms
because it was all online but something
about being in person and having to run
from like practice to classes to
meetings to office hours keeps you
really busy but i mean i would still
love to have a connection with like
black students here so cool i was
wondering
um as a female student here and you’re
studying bio
biomedical biomedical which is huge
and then a very opposite end you’re
doing athletics yeah have you
experienced anything in the way you know
biases or or you know positive
negative positive you know both really i
think that’s the thing i think there’s a
lot of positives in the challenges that
you face
so already being woman in stem is
difficult
but it’s an opportunity to prove
yourself and i think a lot of the time
you will have
kind of a spotlight on you
and in those moments i think this is
where kind of that athletic mentality
has helped me instead of crumbling over
pressure you get to prove
how much better you were than before how
much improvement you’ve made um whether
you’ve failed in the past like i know i
haven’t had
perfect like grades or like times and
tests in class and stuff but i know that
i’ve gotten here and i persevered
in terms of biases
i mean
especially being a black woman you’re
gonna face that everywhere on the field
in the classroom you might look around
you might not see anyone like you
i think the only other black person on
my team is my keeper so that you know
coming in
i already saw that but it wasn’t really
about i’m the only one it’s about like
how can i
use my connections outside in my
background and my experience
and bring that into our culture and kind
of
have that inner play with my teammates
and how i represent myself which
sounds great but it is a lot of pressure
and i will say that’s one of the big
challenges of being
a woman in stem being a black woman
being a student athlete
in
the classroom like in an engineering
program it’s
especially biomedical engineering it’s
very dense
um
and i just often feel pressure to prove
myself that i can do a lot more than
just kick a ball be on the field
and then there’s that pressure of being
woman because i want to prove that women
can do it sometimes i’m not sure if i
can
but because i am a mother i must
persevere
so it’s it’s good pressure i think it is
good pressure so there’s there’s
positives and what may seem like a
negative because it’s built my character
and really who i am so i kind of
surround my identity around all those
things that may seem like challenges
you know i could listen to you forever i
think you’re phenomenal and you are
achieving and breaking barriers yeah
without realizing it
if you had
a quote to share with somebody
maybe something that’s encouraged you or
something that you created and shared
with others what would it be
um something that my teammate actually
just talked to me about today was a
quote i believe it’s by john wooden and
it’s things work out best for the people
that
make the best out of things something
along those lines i know it’s not
perfect but i think really what spoke to
me is the idea that
life will come at you but it’s what you
do with that because there’s like we
talked about challenges from every field
that you’ll experience
whether that’s
athletic life academic personal um
there’ll be a couple curveballs but
what you do with it what you make of it
is what you’ll experience i think that’s
a bit of perspective for me to kind of
always
um
kind of walk with my chin up and um walk
graciously throughout even my toughest
trials and tribulations thank you so
much for that yeah i appreciate your
time
Jade Enalen, Elaine Hanly, Stockton, April 28, 2022.
