Melanie Bendezu (l.) Eddie Bryan (r.)
KEARNY –
Melanie Bendezu is just a 12th-grader but already pondering a possible career as a surgeon. Fellow senior Eddie Bryan is positioning himself as a potential public relations specialist. Both Kearny High School students appear to be on a fast track to academic success. Here’s why:
Melanie, 17, was among an elite group of some 2,500 secondary school students from around the U.S. to attend the third annual Congress of Future Medical Leaders this summer in New England.
To be selected as a participant, students must have a 3.5 grade point average or higher and achieve a target score on a certain state standardized test, according to a spokeswoman for The National Academies, a private organization that sponsors the Congress.
The Congress, held June 25- 27 at Boston College, featured presentations by doctors and medical researchers – both young and old – and by patients who have made remarkable recoveries from debilitating illnesses.
Students also saw the documentary, “Code Black,” based on Los Angeles County Hospital’s trauma center and the birthplace of emergency medicine.
Melanie, who was scheduled to start a 3-week pre-med course at Rutgers Newark last Wednesday, was especially moved by the account related by Carmen Blandin Tarleton, a Vermont resident who received one of the world’s first full face transplants after a brutal attack by her estranged husband – who, in June 2007, beat her with a baseball bat and doused her with industrial- strength lye. After spending more than three months in a medically-induced coma, Tarleton awoke blind and disfigured with burns covering 80% of her body.
“Her whole body and face looked horrendous,” Melanie said. “Now, after her surgeons grafted tissues from inside her body and gave her a bionic eye, she can talk and lives a normal life. It’s such an amazing thing how medical innovations like this can help people.”
Just as impressive to Melanie was listening to another high school senior, Jack Andraka, of Maryland, who at age 15, “found a way to diagnose pancreatic cancer much faster and a lot less expensive” than the current method, she said. [It should be noted that other researchers have questioned the validity of his results, according to Wikipedia.] Andraka is now a medical researcher at Harvard.
Harvard student Eric Chen, who has won three major national science prizes for his research involving new anti-viral drugs, struck Melanie as a wonderful role model. “He told us to continue to ask questions, that you can make a difference at any age,” she said. “He inspired us.”
When she gets to college, Melanie wants to major in biology and, ultimately, become a general surgeon. She hopes the pre-med course can “open my mind more to that field.”
To further her medical knowledge, Melanie serves twice a week with North Arlington Volunteer Emergency Services (NAVES), carrying stretchers, filling out reports, assisting with patients. On Tuesdays, she works from 6 to 10 p.m. and on Saturdays, she puts in a full shift, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. She is CPR-certified and in January she’ll be going for training as an EMT.
Somehow, Melanie also finds time to teach CCD at St. Cecilia’s Parish and run in 100- and 200-meter events for the Kardinals girls’ track team. How does she fit everything in? “I keep organized,” she says.
Lest we forget, there’s also Eddie, 17, who can take pride in having been named a Commended Student in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program – and the only KHS student who has achieved that distinction, according to KHS guidance counselor Jennifer Correnti.
What this means, Eddie explained, is that he achieved a score of 204 out of a possible 240 in the NMSQT test, which is a combined assessment of mastery of language arts and math skills.
Further explanation is provided in a press release issued by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. says that, “About 34,000 Commended Students throughout the nation are being recognized for their exceptional academic promise. Although they will not continue in the 2016 competition for National Merit Scholarship awards, Commended Students placed among the top 5% of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2016 competition by taking the 2014 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/ NMSQT).”
It should probably come as no surprise that Eddie is part of that select group since he is currently taking no less than four Advanced Placement courses in economics, statistics, literature and government/ politics for which he dedicates “usually two hours a night” to homework.
“For now, I’m enjoying economics,” he said. “I’m interested in business and seeing how our economy works” in contrast to how business is carried on by other countries. “I’d like to pursue marketing because I like the idea of interacting with the public,” he added.
He’s probably picked up a few skills in that context since he’s written for The Kearnian, the high school newspaper, since his sophomore year and now he’s the editor.
To keep in shape, Eddie works out in the school gym’s weight room after classes are over. Last year, he was a volunteer soccer coach for the town’s municipal recreation program for the younger kids.
