Kalki Aseged

Kalki Aseged ’17 has always known she wanted to be a doctor. As early as preschool, she told people that would be her profession. 

Aseged, from Blacklick, Ohio, volunteered at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, when she was in high school, and when it came time to pick a major, she chose neuroscience with a premedical track. “I’m interested in all things medicine,” she said.

An internship the summer before her junior year confirmed her career choice. Aseged worked at the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus where she helped conduct research on the benefits of one surgery over another. She also conducted interviews with patients, followed them through their surgeries and compiled the data. 

Now she’s preparing for the Medical College Admission Test.

Despite her rigorous academic schedule, Aseged finds time for activities outside the classroom. She’s an upperclass counselor and tutors fifth-graders at nearby Wiggin Street Elementary. She also works as a tour guide for the Admissions Office, so she gets to tell lots of prospective students why she chose Kenyon.

“I always say that it was my own tour that really attracted me,” she said. She applied to a range of schools, but the people she met at Kenyon drew her to the Hill. “Everyone was so friendly. They wanted to get to know me and talk to me, which was really cool.”

Academics also were a big part of her decision. “People don’t tend to associate liberal arts with strong science,” she said. “But here they challenge you beyond knowing facts about ribosomes or biology or something like that. They make you interpret things, take what you know and use that information to figure out another problem.”

Her non-science classes have had a lasting impact as well. Aseged said the Latin class she took her first year with Associate Professor of Classics Zoë Kontes was particularly challenging. “She wouldn’t take ‘I don’t know’ for an answer,” Aseged said. “You really had to work in that class. I thought I’d be intimidated by that, but I actually liked it because it made me work harder, which helped in other classes.”