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Commencement '22: newly minted graduates tell their stories

Studying nursing in the pandemic, falling for Hillhouse Avenue, and more.

Cathy Shufro, a writing tutor at Yale, has published in the New York Times and many other outlets.

Mark Ostow

Mark Ostow

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Osorachukwu Ifesinachukwu
Austin, Texas

Davenport College
Biomedical Engineering


What appeals to you about biomedical engineering?
The opportunity to delve into two different fields, engineering and medicine, to find the intersections. I did an internship at MD Anderson [Cancer Center], doing research on pediatric bone cancer, and it was just really cool to see how what I learned in class could affect lives. I want to eventually go to grad school. I still have one more semester [at Yale].

Did you take time off because of COVID?
I did, and so I could play another season of football.

What skills does football develop?
Definitely discipline. We had to get up at 4:30 am, three times a week, four times a week. Having to do that, having to really put yourself out there for your teammates, forces you not only to show up physically, but also emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.  

What are your other interests?
I’m also an artist. I do graphite and charcoal work.

How long do you work on a drawing?
One hundred-fifty to three hundred hours.

Wow. Is there a course that you found particularly memorable?
Sculpture Basics and Advanced Drawing. I’m self-taught, so I was in a very new space, out of my comfort zone. For example, I’m very outcome-oriented when it comes to my art, whereas in Sculpture Basics I had to take a more process-oriented route, letting the material they would give me, guide me. And then in Advanced Drawing, we were working at such a fast pace that I couldn’t spend 300 hours on a drawing. I was having to create in a very different way. And that made me have some really cool discoveries about myself and the process and what I
could do.