Margaret Swenson
Margaret Swenson said her parents have always encouraged her to do what makes her happy. A second-year chemistry major with medical school aspirations, Swenson shared why she’s grateful to be at the University of Minnesota and study her passions.
“Both of my parents grew up really poor, in general. My dad had a really bad relationship with his family, so he was kicked out of the house when he was 16 and he lived on the floor of a factory for a while. He just was working to barely get through high school. Then he started working for Washington County, which is where we’re from. He’s worked there for the last 35 years.
My mom also grew up without much money, so college just was absolutely not affordable for her. After she married my dad, she ended up going to do some parts of an associate’s degree. She worked kind of in accounting in the Twin Cities for a long time after that.
Right now, I’m taking human anatomy. We get to actually do the cadaver dissections and it’s super involved. It’s really intense, and it’s six credits. It’s just this giant monster class, but I absolutely love it.
What’s really made it that much more valuable is when I go home and I tell my mom and dad about it. My parents think it’s gross and weird — they’re not science people, which is so fair. But just the look on my mom’s face and my dad’s face when I tell them, ‘Oh, I did this really cool dissection and I learned so much,’ and ‘My professor gave me this compliment. She said, ‘That’s how surgeons get made.’ Just seeing my parents react to that — and knowing that they never got the opportunity to explore things like that — I can just see in them how much it means that I get to have an experience like that.
I think it’s so funny that the highlight of my dad’s life is when I come home and tell him about my life, which is so cute. Sometimes I really don’t think it’s a big deal that I can choose to walk or ride my bike or ride the bus to campus. He’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, did you take the bus today? That’s so cool. Did you see your friends on the bus today? Oh my gosh, did you walk across the bridge today? That bridge is so cool. I want to go to college and I want to walk across a bridge like that.’
It’s so interesting to see the little things that at this point are just part of my routine, that don’t matter to me, just because that’s something my parents never had, it’s mind-blowing to them.
I’m really grateful that they support me in the way that they do and that they are so invested in what I do here now, even if it is as simple as taking the bus versus walking to class that day.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview by Jessy Rehmann