A first-gen trailblazer, Irwin Munoz is becoming a physician to help other navigate the healthcare system.
Author: Paul Harasim
What Irwin Munoz didn’t do – join a Las Vegas criminal gang as some friends and relatives did – freed him up to not only become the first in his family to graduate from high school, but also to become a UNLV graduate and a member of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine Class of 2025.
Yet he says resisting that peer pressure was easier to handle than overcoming the societal negativity toward the poor, as well as the self-doubt that can become a byproducts of grinding poverty.
“As a low-income, first-generation Mexican-American, at first I never envisioned attaining a college education, nor was it discussed as part of my education plan,” says Munoz, who helped pay his immigrant family’s bills, including a mortgage, by working nearly full time at McDonald’s during high school. “For quite a few years, I didn’t speak English well, just Spanish. My (Clark County) public education experience was largely filled with a culture of minimal academic expectations – to finish school and get a job. Most educators didn’t think I could amount to anything.”
Read more here: https://www.unlv.edu/news/article/he-never-envisioned-college-degree-now-hes-medical-student
