From Biology to Podiatry: How Ashley Found Her Footing with Coach

Ashley is about to start podiatry school. She has a plan to return to her rural Oregon hometown after graduating, open a clinic or join the practice she trained with, and take care of the community she grew up in. She’s confident in where she’s headed in her career. Her idea of becoming a doctor formed at a young age, but it didn't start with a clear plan. It started with a gift from a family member.

A passion that started young

Ashley was three or four years old when her uncle handed her her first anatomy textbook. There weren't many people in her family who had gone into medicine. Her dad is a firefighter, her relatives mostly engineers and farmers, but something about that book stuck with her. The curiosity never faded. By the time she got to college, pursuing biology felt natural. What came after that was less certain.

Putting in the work

Like many pre-med students, Ashley's biggest worry wasn't about the coursework or the career itself. "My biggest concern was whether or not I would get into medical school," she says. "That has a lot of uncertainty. It is hard." So she got to work. She interned at a podiatric clinic in Roseburg, Oregon, the same small town she hopes to return to one day, stayed on through summers as a medical assistant, and eventually got to shadow in the operating room. The doctors she worked with took notice. "They were like, actually, you need to do podiatry school. You're doing podiatry school," she recalls. Hearing that from people she looked up to made it feel real in a way it hadn't before. She applied to every podiatry school on her list and got into all of them. On June 7th, she walked across the stage at her undergraduate commencement and collected her Bachelor of Science in Biology, becoming the first in her family to pursue a career in medicine. The little girl with the anatomy textbook had come a long way. And as she maps out her next steps, she's recently found a new ally in Coach. 

Coach is perfect for students who are starting out on their journey.

Finding Coach and exploring the field

Ashley came across Coach through a scholarship listing and was curious enough to give it a try, despite having some reservations about leaning on AI. "I was a little hesitant about the AI usage just because I'm trying to make myself not use it and become reliant on it," she says. She started with a "Day in the life of a podiatrist" activity. Having already spent years working alongside podiatrists, she wasn't looking to learn the basics. She was curious about how others saw her field, the one she had chosen and worked so hard to break into. "It kind of shines a light on other perceptions," she says. It was that openness to a new perspective that won her over.

The chat-based coaching activity, “Experience a day in the life of any career”

Returning to Coach for real-world guidance

What brought her back a second time was the daunting task of getting started on LinkedIn. Like a lot of students standing at the edge of their professional lives for the first time, she knew she was supposed to be networking, but had no idea where to start. "People are talking about networking and I was like, I've never done this before. I need guidance." She didn't want to keep going back to her advisors for every little question, so she pulled up Coach's networking and LinkedIn modules instead. It helped.

She hasn't had time to sit down and rebuild her profile yet, in the midst of her cross-country move, but she knows exactly what she wants to do when she does. Open Coach, open LinkedIn, and work through it side by side.

Advice for students still figuring it out

For students who are earlier in the process, still searching for that thing that clicks the way anatomy clicked for Ashley at age four, she thinks Coach is worth trying. "Better than Google by far," she says. But she's also honest that there's no substitute for getting out there in person. "I would still hope that they would try to take the initiative and go in physically to offices and ask for shadowing hours." Coach is a genuinely useful tool when you don't have those connections yet.

"It's perfect for students who are starting out on their journey and trying to figure out what they want to do. There is definitely a lot of value in this program.”