"I was reading this Time magazine article at a medical school interview, and every page I would turn and every article I would read, I would start thinking about all of these issues," says Ramos, who wrote his senior honors thesis on the recent controversy over HIV testing for newborns in New York. "I was reading and thinking about all of these questions which Harvard and all of my academic classes here teach you to ask. I will not be able to read things without asking these questions again."
Medical School-Bound
The next things Ramos will read will be scientific journals and gross anatomy textbooks in the Countway Library at Harvard Medical School.
He chose Harvard over Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore because of the superior quality of the Harvard faculty and its outstanding academic and teaching reputation.
Ramos hopes to return to the South Bronx and work at a community health clinic in his old neighborhood.
"I want to be a living role model for a lot of the kids growing up there," Ramos says. "I want to be a powerful contrast to the drug dealer on the corner and to tell the kids, 'Look, we both came from the same place and now we are both back here--do you want to be like me or do you want to be like him?' and I want a lot of people to choose my side and to make sure to show them that there is light at the end of tunnel."
And in this community, not only role-models but also bilingual physicians who grew up in the area neighborhood are needed.
And so at least part of the Rey Ramos story will end today, as it began eight years ago, with his mother's tears.
But these tears will be different.
They will be tears of overwhelming happiness and joy as Carmen Ramos watches her son become the first in the family to graduate from college.
They will be tears of pride as she watches her only son graduate magna cum laude from Harvard College.
And yes, these tears today will be tears of hope. Hope because Carmen Ramos knows that her only son has his life back on track. Hope because she knows that her community will be better when her son comes back to practice medicine there.
"All throughout school, we were always told, 'Success is getting out of this hell-hole,'" Ramos says. "But the way that I have always thought about that was, 'No, success is cleaning up this hell-hole and making it good for everybody.' That is success."