Cohorts: Amie Barrow '26 MD'30

Amie is a competitive swimmer who represented Gambia in the 2024 Summer Olympics in the 100 meter breaststroke. At Brown, she is a member of the women’s swimming and diving team , a Health and Human Biology concentrator in the Program in Liberal Medical Education, and a Meiklejohn Peer Advisor, providing academic advice and counseling for first-year students.

What brought you to Brown?

I really loved the idea of an open curriculum. In high school, I enjoyed every subject, but biology and science were always my favorites. I knew I definitely wanted to be a doctor, which was something exciting to come to Brown for as I also wanted to take in a little bit of everything and explore. I also wanted to be on the East Coast—I’m from Milwaukee, so I knew I wanted to leave Wisconsin and the Midwest in general. I moved to the US with my family when I was 8 years old. My mom is Finnish and my dad is Gambian, and I was born in the United Kingdom and lived there until we settled in Milwaukee.

What are some of your academic interests?

I want to be an orthopedic surgeon.  Sports orthopedics in particular would be cool, as that would be the kind of patient population that I want to work with. Before that I wanted to be in oncology, and I worked in an immunology lab in New York this summer. It was super fun and useful, but I realized that I liked the research aspect more than the clinical parts of oncology. I don’t want to pursue a PhD. I think I would like working with a patient population and the sorts of injuries and surgeries you might see in orthopedics.

This spring, I’m hoping to get into some clinical research projects at the hospitals affiliated with the Medical School, but right now I’m working on a research project aimed at exploring orthopedic surgeons’ experiences and practices of patient education. This project is based on a framework from Patient Education in Sport Injury and Rehabilitation (Arvinen-Barrow, Visek, and Barrow, 2024), a book-chapter that I co-authored as an undergraduate. This research will help bridge the gap between theory and practice—the conceptual understanding of patient education presented in our chapter and its real-world implementation by orthopedic surgeons. . I’d also like to take a few more business-focused classes, like entrepreneurship classes, just for fun.

What does your day-to-day life at Brown look like?

I’m at practice all the time! I practiced in the morning, and I’ll practice again at 3 p.m., so I spend most of my time at the pool, especially when we’re in season. There was a moment in time where my phone thought the address for the pool here was my home, so I’m always balancing that with classes. When the season’s finished by around March, I have a little bit more time, which is why I’m really trying to get into clinical research next semester.

How do you balance being an athlete with academics?

Being part of the PLME has made it easier from the premed side. For my first few summers, I was able to just swim—I competed at World Aquatics Championships in 2023 and 2025, and the Olympic Games in 2024—and during my freshman and sophomore years I didn’t have the heightened pressure to do intense research or become a certified nursing assistant or something like that. PLME definitely allowed me to focus on swimming and now that I’m almost retiring, I can start shifting fully into research. Most of the work comes day-in and day-out—getting up at 5 a.m., going to practice, then class, then staying on top of it all—but I try to remember that this is something that I choose to do and it’s fun. You get out what you put in, so it’s a lot of work but it’s very rewarding, and I do believe that a lot of skills I learned in swimming have translated into my schoolwork in terms of discipline, hard work, and knowing that you do a little bit every day and you’ll get better.

Do you have any other hobbies outside of classes?

I’m not on a meal plan anymore, so I’ve been cooking a lot and practicing for next year when I have my own apartment. Pasta is a go-to, and I made tacos the other night, and I like testing out easy little meals. A lot of my friends are in finance and they’re all going to be moving to New York next year, but I’m honestly very excited to start medical school here. I’m looking forward to exploring Providence more, because during swim season, I don’t really have the chance to leave College Hill. There is a lot to see and do in Providence that I have yet to see, so I’m excited and happy I get to be at Brown for another four years.