Marissa Long
Junior / Chemistry / Ronkonkoma, NY
I think there is a certain kind of student that comes here. If you want to blend into a crowd, you can't do it here. You're going to be seen. People are going to know you. Your teachers are going to know you. If you want to be a major part of your classes, Goucher is a great place to be.
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“My goal is to be a doctor, and I know that so much of my drive comes from my ties to athletics and being very careful with my body,” says Marisa Long, a chemistry major with a premed concentration. “I think my drive to take all these science classes, to figure out more about my body and self, and to become a doctor—that always came from my sports background, and playing, and being in tune with what’s going on in my body.”
Like many premed students, Long was initially worried about fitting athletics into her busy schedule. With careful planning, she’s managed to spend two years playing on Goucher’s women’s soccer team, and four years running cross-country and track. She’s done all of this in conjunction with her academic activities, which have included a study-abroad experience and summer undergraduate research. She’s also president of the Student Athletic Council, an organization that coordinates community service activities for Goucher athletic teams.
It’s a busy schedule, but Long wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I think that through sports, you have these instances where you’re just like, ‘this is awesome,’” she says. “This November, I went to regionals with the teams. The race had 300 other girls in it. And you look along this starting line, and you’re standing there in your uniform, and there are 42 schools participating, and you think, ‘This is school pride. I get to run against the best in the region, and represent my college. I go to Goucher, and you’re all going to know where I’m from when I pass you.’”
On the academic side of things, Long is particularly intrigued by biochemistry and biochemical engineering. Her interest in these two fields was piqued by her participation in a Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity program at the University of Georgia. While there, she assisted graduate students with research on the genetic codes of bacteria, and got a preview of what might await her in a biochemistry master’s program.
“It was what I do in class, put into a real-life situation,” says Long. “The work that I did here in cell biology prepared me perfectly for what we did in the lab. When I got there, they told me that I might want to read up on this and that, and I said ‘Actually, I’ve already done that.’ It was nice to be able to walk into that kind of a situation feeling confident that I could handle it.”
Long’s classroom lab experiences also prepared her well for “Tropical Marine Biology in Honduras,” an intensive course abroad offered in cooperation with the Roatan Institute for Marine Studies. While in Honduras, Long explored endangered coral reefs, seagrass beds, mangrove forests, and lowland rainforests.
“In your biology classes, you learn about all these fish and marine animals, but sometimes it’s hard to picture them,” says Long. “Even when you’re in a lab, it’s just a fish in a jar. But to actually swim with these fish and see their environment—I feel like you can understand so much more about what you’ve learned in the classroom.”