Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘janitor’

Janitor to Doctor

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on May 22, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Shay Taylor-Allen.
Shay Taylor-Allen recently matched as a resident as Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut. “For a decade,” says the Washington Post, “Taylor-Allen worked as a janitor there.“

I’ve followed a guy on Instagram for some years who made the journey from janitor to doctor. It took hard work, hope, and a very supportive wife. Today I learn about a woman who is making that same transition. Sydney Page at the Washington Post has the story.

“For about a decade, Shay Taylor-Allen walked the halls of Yale New Haven Hospital pushing a janitor’s cart. She mopped patient rooms, disinfected surfaces and emptied the trash.

“Soon, she’ll walk the halls of the hospital again, this time wearing a white coat.

“Taylor-Allen, 32, recently matched into an anesthesiology residency at Yale New Haven Hospital — where she spent most of her adult life working as part of the cleaning staff. …

“Taylor-Allen’s connection to Yale New Haven Hospital started in October 1993, when she was born in the hospital’s maternity ward. She grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, and was raised by a single mother of three. She graduated from Wilbur Cross High School in 2010 and was in the top 10 percent of her class, she said. …

“Taylor-Allen said she had little guidance at school, and since no one in her family had gone to college, she wasn’t sure how to approach applying. … She applied for a few positions at Yale New Haven Hospital and landed a job as a janitor when she was 18.

” ‘It was a lot of busy work,’ she said. But it was also rewarding, she said, because she enjoyed connecting with patients.

“ ‘I think a lot of patients come in with mistrust of doctors and nurses, so they build trust with service workers because they feel like they’re one of us,’ Taylor-Allen said. “Sometimes they just needed somebody to talk to about anything else in the world other than their sickness.’ …

“But she was sure it would not be her long-term career.

“ ‘I knew I wanted to do something other than be a janitor, I just didn’t know what that was,’ Taylor-Allen said.

“She started college in 2013 at Southern Connecticut State University and continued her janitorial job full time. Her mother had become ill, so Taylor-Allen was also helping look after her younger brother.

“Shortly before Taylor-Allen started college, her family home caught on fire, and for years after, her mother had difficulty breathing.

“ ‘She explained that it was like breathing through a straw,’ Taylor-Allen said.

“She repeatedly took her mother to Yale New Haven Hospital, and doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. ‘They would just write it off as mental illness,’ Taylor-Allen said. ‘This was my first time learning about a health care disparity.’

“She decided to email Marna P. Borgstrom, then the chief executive of Yale New Haven Hospital, as she had cleaned her office before. She knew the chances of getting a response were slim.

“ ‘She emailed me back within that day,’ Taylor-Allen said, adding that Borgstrom arranged several appointments for Taylor-Allen’s mother with a new medical team, and they diagnosed her with vocal cord dysfunction, a condition that obstructs the airway.

“ ‘She advocated for my mom,’ Taylor-Allen said of Borgstrom. ‘Seeing advocacy first-hand truly pushed me to want to do it as well.’

“She decided to apply to medical school. When she told her college adviser her goal of becoming a doctor … “I just don’t see it for you,” ‘ Taylor-Allen recalled him saying.

“Taylor-Allen was undeterred. She got her master’s degree at Connecticut’s Quinnipiac University to bolster her science background — all while keeping her job as a janitor.

“When it came time to apply to medical school in 2019, she was initially rejected from the more than 20 schools she applied to. That’s when she connected with Gena Foster, an assistant professor of medicine in hematology at Yale School of Medicine, and Foster became Taylor-Allen’s mentor. …

“Foster helped Taylor-Allen restructure her medical school application.

“ ‘It’s impossible for somebody to get into medical school and become a physician without mentorship,’ Foster said. …

“Taylor-Allen was waitlisted at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., but eventually was accepted and began classes in 2021. …

“During medical school, Taylor-Allen said she always hoped to return to New Haven and complete her residency at Yale. She did a rotation in anesthesia last November, and it solidified her desire to work there. …

“ ‘I still can’t really talk about it without tearing up,’ Foster said. ‘She’s going to be my colleague. It’s so cool. I’m so excited.’ ”

More at WaPo, here.

Read Full Post »

Invisible No More

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on December 1, 2016| 2 Comments »

Photo: Andy Hogg/Unsung Heroes
Georgetown students raised more than $5,000 for Umberto “Suru” Ripai, a cashier at the dining hall, who is now able to visit his family in South Sudan for the first time in 45 years.

On Facebook, Cousin Claire reposted a wonderful story that Cousin Nancy had shared. It describes exactly the kind of outreach I think of when I say that small acts by one person can make the world a better place.

Petula Dvorak writes at the Washington Post, “Every night, they had the same routine. The Georgetown University business student would settle in for his cram session — soda, chips, books lined up. And the janitor would come in to start his night shift — polishing each of the windows in the study room, moving amid all those books and chips and sodas. Invisible.

“ ‘There was this space, like ice separating us,’ said Oneil Batchelor, an immigrant from Jamaica. The janitor worked around the students — many of them in their 20s like him, many with entrepreneurial ambitions like him — for nearly a decade before one of them finally broke that ice last year.

“A nod one night. A hello the next.

“And within weeks, Batchelor and the student, Febin Bellamy, were having long talks about being immigrants, about wanting to be entrepreneurs, about politics and history and music. Bellamy even went to Batchelor’s church and met his 6-year-old daughter.

“After he formed that bond with the once-invisible worker, Bellamy couldn’t stop noticing the others. …

“Each of those workers has a story. Many of them are immigrants, and their collective histories of war and flight and families left behind offer a master class in geo­politics. No tuition needed.

“Bellamy understands because these are his people. His family immigrated to the United States from India when he was 5. When they got to New York, his mother worked as a nursing assistant and his father as a customer service rep while they were going to college at night and raising a family in the few hours left over.

“Bellamy started at a community college and then transferred to Georgetown as a junior. He knows the scrap and fight the folks fixing pipes and cleaning bathrooms have inside them.

“So he had a brainstorm. What if he found a way to introduce the workers to the students? And that idea went from a class project in April to a fundraiser making real change today.

“He did it in the language his peers understand: a Facebook page. He calls it Unsung Heroes, and he began posting little profiles of workers around campus. …

“The students also learned about some of the hopes percolating, as windows are washed and floors are scrubbed. And they’re helping.

“Turns out that Batchelor really is a gifted cook. Students who read about him encouraged him to hold fundraisers serving his now-famous-on-campus chicken. They raised $2,500, got him catering gigs and helped him put up his own web page, Oneil’s Famous Jerk.

“ ‘It’s like the door has cracked open in front of me,’ he said. ‘And I can smell the air coming through. The inspiration.’ ” Lots more here.

Photo: Andy Hogg/Unsung Heroes
Georgetown University business major Febin Bellamy, left, talks with janitor Oneil Batchelor, who wants to open a chicken joint. Students raised $2,500 and got him catering gigs.

Read Full Post »

Custodian’s Art Brightens Drab School

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2016| 5 Comments »

I’m so glad Cousin Claire shared this New York Times story on Facebook. It’s about a school custodian with an artistic bent whose talent is raising everyone’s spirits.

Corey Kilgannon writes writes that Israel Reyes, “senior handyman and longtime boiler operator at Public School 69X Journey Prep in the Soundview section of the Bronx,” finds the lonely summer months to be a good time “to concentrate on the colorful wall murals he has become known for painting inside the 93-year-old building. …

“For years, the 15-foot walls were faded and drab, Mr. Reyes said.

“ ‘There were no colors — it was like walking into a prison,’ recalled Mr. Reyes, who said that 12 years ago he grew tired of watching students entering the building each morning with their heads down.

“ ‘A lot of these kids come from broken homes, just like I did, and I’d see them walking in, all stressed out and looking down, because the school looked even worse than their homes,’ he said. ‘I wanted to do something to make them look up.’

“So he persuaded the principal to let him use leftover paint from other jobs in the building to start creating an educational wonderland. He worked for years, during his down time, his lunch hour and on his personal time, even late into the night.

“ ‘The kids come in now in the morning and they smile,’ Mr. Reyes said. ‘They come in and ask me, “What’s next?” and I show them what I worked on overnight.’ ” …

“Mr. Reyes, whom everyone calls Carlos, said he and his five brothers were raised by his father in the Bronx and on a farm in Puerto Rico.

“ ‘We had to make our own toys from garbage, from whatever we found,’ said Mr. Reyes, who as an adult has made sculptures out of trash-picked objects, especially the wooden legs off discarded furniture, to entertain his four children and 14 grandchildren.

“He calls it ‘table leg art,’ and has made a panorama representation of Manhattan that is on display in the school library, a cityscape with wooden legs as skyscrapers. …

“Until recently, said Mr. Reyes, a widower, his apartment was decorated in an over-the-top theme — a botanical garden with a pond, a lamppost and a park bench — recalling his Puerto Rican upbringing.

“ ‘When my son moved back home, I had to sleep on the bench,’ he said. ‘I’d tell people, “I’m not homeless, but I sleep on a park bench.” ‘ ” More.

I’ve read that no matter what kind of job you have, there should be some aspect that is yours alone, where you can express your creativity. I couldn’t agree more.

Photo: Santiago Mejia/The New York Times  
Israel Reyes, at Public School 69X in the Bronx, wanted to brighten the building for students. 

Read Full Post »