Replacing a jersey with a new white coat

When Andreya Hesser walked onto the court at Centennial High School on July 15, it was familiar territory. She had been there plenty of times before, wearing a volleyball uniform as a Centennial student and playing on the same court where, years later, she would stand with 203 other members of the Burrell College of Health Sciences School of Osteopathic Medicine Class of 2030.

This time, someone slipped a white coat over her shoulders.

“It was an incredible moment,” Hesser said. “It was like, wow, everything I’ve done up until now has led to this point. It was just like, is this real right now?”

For Hesser, the annual White Coat Ceremony was more than the symbolic beginning of medical school. It was something of a homecoming within a homecoming, the latest stop in a journey that has rarely taken her very far from Las Cruces, and one she hopes will eventually lead to a career as a physician.

“I grew up in Las Cruces, born and raised,” she said. “My whole family is here. A lot of friends are here still.”

After graduating from Centennial, Hesser went across town to New Mexico State University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in biology. She then spent two years in Knoxville, Tennessee, with her fiancé, who is pursuing a doctorate in structural engineering. Those years away also gave Hesser some space between undergraduate school and medical school, something she now considers valuable.

“It kind of gives you more time to grow and develop as an individual as well,” she said. “I don’t think I would have been ready to go straight into school.”

When it came time to choose a medical school, Hesser looked beyond Las Cruces. Living in Tennessee at the time, she applied to schools in that region and was accepted elsewhere, but Burrell had always been there.

Growing up in Las Cruces, she had watched the medical school become part of the community after welcoming its first class in 2016. She had driven past its campus adjacent to NMSU and imagined herself there. The pull of home and of the school itself was strong.

“I did get into other schools, but I wanted to come home, and I wanted to come to Burrell,” Hesser said. “I think the community here is amazing and it’s very supportive, and the faculty and staff are very focused on their students, and they want you to succeed.”

Hesser’s interest in medicine also began close to home. Her father owns Millennium Health and Wellness, a multidisciplinary practice focused on pain management, chiropractic care and holistic healing. Hesser worked there during high school and college, including time as a physical therapy technician. For a while, she thought physical therapy might be her future.

A knee injury gave her another perspective on health care and initially sparked an interest in orthopedic surgery. Later, after shadowing in general surgery, she found herself intrigued by the variety and complexity of that work.

“It was like, wow, this is so intricate, so much variety, really interesting,” she said. “It really shows how much our body systems are interconnected, and that’s what I love.”

For now, general surgery is the possibility that interests her most, but Hesser is careful about “for now.” Four years of medical school lie ahead, including clinical rotations that will expose her to specialties she has yet to seriously consider. She could become a surgeon. She could discover something completely different.

“I know I’m very early into my medical career,” she said. “I know that I could, at the end of the day, become a psychiatrist or anesthesiologist or something else, but I am interested in general surgery at the moment.”

She is not the only member of her family finding a place in health care. One sister is beginning a nurse practitioner program at NMSU, while another works as a medical malpractice paralegal. Hesser would become the family’s first osteopathic physician.

That journey formally began with the white coat.

The July 15 ceremony was the first White Coat Ceremony since the institution adopted the name Burrell College of Health Sciences in June. Since opening with its first class in 2016, the college has graduated 1,030 physicians.

Medical students receive a short white coat at the beginning of their training, with the longer coat associated with physicians coming later. At Burrell, each student received a coat embroidered with the student’s name and the college insignia, and the ceremony concluded with the Osteopathic Oath.

For a school that emphasizes preparing physicians to serve rural, border and medically underserved communities, putting the coat on a Las Cruces native carried its own resonance. For Hesser, though, the moment was more personal.

“It just in itself felt like an accomplishment,” she said. “Like, okay, this is the beginning to the rest of my journey.”

And then, almost immediately, symbolism gave way to the work as classes began the following week. By the time Hesser sat down to talk about the ceremony, she had already taken, and passed, her first medical school exam.

“We have exams every two weeks,” Hesser said. “So, it’s kind of this constant cycle of just, you know, keep going.”

She knows the years ahead will be difficult. There will be demanding coursework, clinical rotations and, eventually, the long shifts of residency. None of that comes as a surprise.

“At this point, you don’t get to this point without knowing that this is the path you want to take,” she said. “You wouldn’t do all this prep work and all this stuff and jump through all these hoops to be in this seat right now.”

Asked what concerned her most about what lies ahead, Hesser struggled to come up with much. She treasures her sleep and she knows there will be considerably less of it at various points along the way. But mostly, she is ready to find out where the path takes her.

“I’m just overall excited for the journey,” Hesser said. “I know it’s going to be hard. I know it’s not going to be easy. But that’s part of the path, part of the journey.”

For someone who left Las Cruces only briefly before choosing to come back, that journey began in an especially fitting place: on a high school gym floor she already knew well, wearing a new white coat and preparing to become something she had imagined for years.