Ann Jones:  

My parents packed up the house on South Ridge Trail four days after high school graduation and moved the family to Fort Worth Texas. I was familiar with Texas - we moved to New York from Austin - but nonetheless I felt like an immigrant in some strange new land. They say that your childhood home holds a place in your heart and I suppose that holds for me. I started college at Oklahoma State University in 1981 and although I never quite clicked with Stillwater, OK I did have opportunities galore and many adventures. I studied engineering for five semesters and enjoyed being a lone woman in a sea of men but not enough to stick with the Industrial Engineering program. Spurred by an attack of jealousy when I saw Christi McMorrow reading a biology text in the dorm hallway, I made an appointment with a pre-med advisor and then called my parents to tell them they would be paying for another year of college. To their credit, all they asked for was that I kept my grade point up. Three years later, I was back in Dallas, this time on my own terms, working as a waitress, living in an area just south of anything considered trendy, and starting medical school. I finished in 1990 and moved to Long Beach, CA where I lived a mile from the beach and thought I had found paradise. I trai...Expand for more