Suffice it to say that Linsey Golding’s early life didn't offer a great start toward medical school.

California’s social services and the court system decided the little girl would be better off in foster care than with her biological parents and she was placed in four foster homes. Today, the 25-year-old woman can tell you that foster care frequently falls short of the hoped-for care needed to nurture a child. While some foster parents are loving, she says, others are physically or emotionally abusive or both – and some of them are in it only for the money. 

Now she's in her first year at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV. 

How she got to this time and place, she says, isn’t something that can easily be mapped out. What she does know is that a love for learning, hard work, therapy, and desire to help others made the difference.

At age 12, Golding was adopted by her great aunt and uncle in Fallon, Nevada. “I had to move around a lot while I was in foster care, and it really affected my grades. It always seemed like I was attending court hearings.”

The stability provided by her adoptive parents – her father was an electronics technician and her who was a purchaser for defense contractors – brought about what she calls her most positive moment before high school. “After I was adopted and stopped attending court hearings, I finally got my first perfect attendance award. It was something so small to others but meant the world to me.”

Though she did well in school – she was co-valedictorian of her class – she never felt comfortable. “When I was in foster care, I had never learned how to socialize properly with other kids because I moved around so much and still hadn’t quite figured it out in high school. Each foster family had its own set of rules. I kept to myself a lot and schoolwork was something I was good at, something that made me feel good. I just never learned how to make conversation easily or how to respond to social cues, but years of therapy helped me a lot from where I was.”

A Lucky Break in the Military Leads to Medicine

By the time of her 2015 high school graduation, Golding didn’t have a real idea of what kind of career she wanted, so she enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. “I didn’t have any money for college and couldn’t see taking out loans when I didn’t know what kind of career I wanted.” Also unsure of what she’d excel at in the Air Force, she ended up taking a position that was open — diagnostic imaging technologist.

It turned out she enjoyed carrying out the X-ray, mammography, and computed tomography (CT) scan process for patients. Talking with other technicians about their mission, along with addressing the concerns of patients, helped her open up socially. While on active duty, she completed a bachelor’s degree in health science, with all As, through a Purdue University distance learning program. At that point, she didn’t know whether to go to medical school or to be trained as a physician assistant.

During her work, largely on the East Coast, she often shadowed doctors to get a better sense of what they did. On one occasion, she recalls how a physician saved a veteran’s pregnancy with a cervical cerclage procedure. “It was medicine that did this, and I wanted to someday lead a team to directly help patients.”

Stationed at one point in Washington, D.C., Golding was sent on Memorial Day to Arlington National Cemetery to help honor those who had sacrificed their lives for their country.

“I was sent to place a ribbon on the headstone of a certain soldier who had died during Operation Iraqi Freedom when I came across his mother and stepfather…She invited me to sit, and what was initially intended to be a brief visit turned into a five-hour long conversation about the hopes and dreams and the legacy that her son, Michael, had left despite his young age of 19. After learning that day about the shortage of physicians deployed and the direct consequences service members faced because of it, I knew that I wanted to be a physician, to make sure less people both in the military and in civilian life will end up like Michael.”

Golding found transitioning to civilian life from the military a couple of years ago very difficult.

“I needed to take science courses that are required for medical school, but when I came out of the military in the middle of the pandemic, social isolation was at an all-time high. Fortunately, I was able to find sources for help through the Veterans Administration.”

Golding, who’s still unsure about which medical specialty she’ll pursue, knows becoming a physician is what she must do.

“Despite having met so many amazing, fascinating and remarkable patients as a radiologic technologist, I always felt limited. My interactions were very short and surface-level. I always had the desire to dig deeper, be at the forefront of patients’ journeys, and be actively part of their treatment.”