Pipe Dream sat down with Melissa Frascella, BU alumna and Medikidz North America accounts manager, before her TEDx speech. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Pipe Dream: Why did you decide to do a TEDx talk at Binghamton University?
Melissa Frascella: I love Binghamton, and I’m very involved in the Binghamton Metro New York chapter which brings together alumni who all live in the New York area. It’s really important to give back to Binghamton — it gave me a lot so I always want to come back and give back. When I met the TEDxBinghamtonUniversity team at the metro connections night in January, it was a no-brainer. I wanted to come back to my old stomping grounds.
PD: Why did you choose Binghamton in the first place, and how were you involved during your time here?
MF: My family went here, and really had such positive experiences. It’s a great opportunity to go to school in New York, enjoy the community and also get have academics with so much to offer.
I was the president of colleges against cancer, which did Relay for Life every year, and I was in the sorority Phi Sigma Sigma. I was very interested in in those two things. It’s really important to be active on campus, and the minute I got here I knew I wanted to be involved and to start networking.
PD: You began college as pre-med, so how did you end up in the Individualized Major Program (IMP)?
MF: I knew I wanted to do something that combined business and healthcare and social studies. There wasn’t a lot of that in pre-med; it was pretty straightforward biology, chemistry — all those things. My brain just doesn’t really work that way. I really wanted a bit more of psychology and economics. But I tried it, I got my feet wet with the freshmen track, and then really decided I needed to explore and do other things. I really didn’t enjoy the content as much as I thought I did.
Sophomore year I was struggling because I didn’t want to transfer, I had a phenomenal freshman year experience, I had great friends and I really loved the University. I needed to do something that combined everything I wanted into one course of study. I learned about IMP through one of the advisors. She was very careful to tell me that it’s not easy, it’s not something that most students do but it’s an option. I called my IMP health communications, and it had three fundamentals: health and wellness classes, science and psychology classes, and economics as well.
PD: What was your path from BU to Medikidz?
MF: I graduated from Binghamton and went right into graduate school at New York Medical College, where I pursued my master’s in public health. I knew I wanted to keep the momentum of being a student and take everything that I’d learned and valued at Binghamton to the next level. I was working while in school for the nonprofit Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. That gave me lots of experience working with kids and families, and I got to see firsthand the importance health communications and the need for educational resources to help with really stressful and difficult times like diabetes diagnoses. I was also working in the pharmaceutical industry and exposing myself to a lot of different environments that way. And then I found Medikidz. Medikidz is a blessing: it encompasses everything I’ve done over the years in terms of studying and interning. We work with hospitals, doctors, patients and families — everything I’ve done in my professional career is at Medikidz.
PD: What is the focus of your talk?
MF: My talk is about children with serious medical conditions, and how they are empowered to rise above the challenges they face every day to be normal happy kids. They don’t let a condition define them and they don’t succumb to the stress and hardships of having a medical condition. The title of my talk is “Defy the Constraints of ‘Supposed To.’” I’ve always been fascinated by things in society that dictate what we’re supposed to do. Part of it is that I’m in my 20’s, and there are a whole set of milestones we’re told we’re supposed to hit. We’re supposed to get married, we’re supposed to live in the city and have kids at a certain age — I never really believed in that. Open up the doors and do things the way you want to do them for your life, and don’t let other people tell you otherwise.
PD: How did you find a way to defy the ‘supposed to’s?’
MF: I think the best way for me was pursuing the IMP. The challenge I faced was being very lost and confused as a student. I like medicine, but I didn’t want to be premed. I like to write, but I didn’t want to pursue English. I’m interested in economics, but I didn’t want to be an economist. I felt very lost for a while, and I didn’t know what that meant for my education or my future. The challenge was to explore other ways of doing things and not just declare a major because I had to. Really, I wanted to find a way to be true to myself and do things that I know I’m passionate and care about.
PD: What advice do you have for students?
MF: Always make sure to do what you love. There’s no such thing as a safe career, especially in this job market right now. Make sure that you always do what you love. Take classes that you’re interested in, channel what drives you and gives you that urge to get out of bed in the morning to make your mark. When you’re thrown into a college campus, you think that you’re going to do job because it sounds good. Why are you doing it because it sounds good? Stay true to your passions.