Harvard Portrait Project, MBA Class Of 2022

SOLEY OLAFSSON, MBA ’22

I have lived with a lot of sickness. I was not sick, but many people around me were. I remember my brother losing unhealthy amounts of weight, struggling to stay on the football team in high school, as the doctors ran tests to eventually diagnose him with Crohn’s Disease. There was another family member who missed my college graduation as they attended treatment programs for substance abuse. I spent many nights sleeping on a hospital bench, as my significant other was getting treatment for leukemia. Not all of it was forced upon me. I chose to seek it out. I went to medical school and diagnosed and treated patients with sicknesses of all kinds.

Life can be hard, and sickness can make it harder. I have devoted my life to trying to temper that sickness – trying to cure or treat to the best of my abilities. As a future doctor, I hope my own experiences lend me empathy and a listening ear for my patients. With each day of my practice, I plan to walk into the room and treat each patient as though it was my brother, my family member, or my significant other.

 

JOE STENGER, MBA ’22

On my ninth birthday, I rode my four-wheeler through the large muddy fields on our family farm, splashing in and out of the mud puddles created by the melting snow. My future was far from my mind, but even at that age I remember contemplating the world and my place in it. In Appalachia, opportunity ebbs and flows with the demand for steel and coal, and in 1992, many of the factories that once provided the community’s lifeblood sat dormant along the banks of the Ohio River. Subsumed by poverty, the “soft bigotry of low expectations” had crept its way into the social construct. Even as children, our place in the world looked immutable. Fortunately for me, that changed when two fighter jets flew low and fast over me. I was awestruck by their majesty and wondered if maybe, just maybe, I had what it takes to pilot such a machine.

Turns out, I did.

I will always remember where I came from and will forever be a champion for small town kids with bigtime dreams, all the underdogs living on dirt roads and in the “holler,” for the ones whose dreams scare their teachers, and for the ones nobody believes in.

That’s a promise, ya’ll.

See the entire Harvard Portrait Project collection here. 

DON’T MISS: 20 YEARS OF THE HARVARD PORTRAIT PROJECT: Q&A WITH CREATOR TONY DEIFELL

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