Karen Bai’s father told her she would never succeed in life. Today she’s a second-year medical student at Stony Brook University School of Medicine.
Karen was born in a small town in northern China where, she says, girls were viewed as less valuable than boys.
“As a child, my father told me that I would never amount to anything, that I was always going to be a second-class citizen to men.”
But in 1998, Karen and her family immigrated to Canada where she and her mother fell in love with their new home and their new country’s values.
In Canada, Karen and her mother learned about the importance of diversity and tolerance, and enjoyed the equality and acceptance they found in their new community. Eventually Karen’s mother found the courage to leave her husband who could not relinquish his old-fashioned beliefs.
Having this newfound freedom gave Karen the incentive to pursue her lifelong dream — to become a physician.
“Canada has been very generous to my mother and me,” she said. “Student loan programs and job training programs offered by the government allowed my mom to go back to school, find a job and raise me by herself. Like many children in Canada, I have been blessed with free access to education and cared for by the universal healthcare system.”
After receiving her Master’s degree from the University of Toronto, Karen came to Stony Brook University, where she is now a second-year medical student.
“When I told my father more than a decade ago that I wanted to become a doctor, he laughed and said that it was ‘a man's job’ and that I would never be ‘smart enough’ for anything,” she said in a “What’s Your Story” article published by the Canadian Broadcasting Service.
That’s why her first stethoscope carries such significance for her. She received it in 2015 at the white coat ceremony at Stony Brook, when she took the Hippocratic Oath.
