Top Davies students have same long-term ambitions
For Tech’s valedictorian and salutatorian, hard work, good grades have paid off, now medical school awaits
LINCOLN — Roseline Lima and Erika Ramos may be off to different Rhode Island higher education institutions in the fall, but they both have the same goal several years down the road: Go to medical school.
Lima used to want to be a veterinarian, but after watching a lot of documentaries on surgery, she decided she wanted to be surgeon. Ramos is interested in becoming a pediatric oncologist.
For the Class of 2017 at William M. Davies, Jr. Career and Technical High School, Lima is the valedictorian and Ramos the salutatorian. They will be graduating on June 13 at the Stadium Theatre in Woonsocket.
Lima was born in Cape Verde and moved with her family to the United States when she was four. After living for eight years in Central Falls, they now live in Pawtucket.
Most of Lima’s family is still in Cape Verde, and she goes back to visit them once in awhile.
“It was difficult, because we didn’t really have people to rely on,” she said of the move to another country, and they didn’t speak English. But they adjusted.
Lima chose the pre-engineering program at Davies Tech, saying it was the one that she enjoyed the most while doing rotations. She liked the program but said it wasn’t for her, that she wanted to instead pursue her original dream of becoming a doctor.
In the fall, she will be going to the University of Rhode Island and majoring in health studies.
Outside of the classroom, she was involved in student council all four years of high school and volunteered as
a Girl Scouts assistant troop leader. She also volunteered for TALL (Transition through Arts Literacy Learning) University, a Central Falls program for English Language Learners.
Lima said she would go into classrooms to help kids with strategies to focus on class and relieve stress.
When she started at Davies Tech four years ago, Lima was scared to move to a new school, but she found that everyone there was like family. Her advice to underclass-
men at the school is to not be scared, get out there, do what you like and not let anybody hold you back from what you want to do.
ERIKA RAMOS will be attending Rhode Island College in the fall to study health sciences. She has her CNA license and plans to work during college.
Along with being in the health careers program at Davies, she has had experiences outside of the classroom that have prepared her for future medical studies.
She volunteered for two summers at Rhode Island Hospital, one year as a greeter and another cleaning beds and equipment in the outpatient surgery center. For her senior project, she ran a workshop that involved talking to teenagers about HIV and HIV testing. Now, she works as a receptionist at AIDS Care Ocean State.
Outside of health-related volunteering at work, Ramos was student council president for one year.
“It was hard, considering that a lot of students weren’t involved,” she said, “so we had to decide and then people complained that they didn’t like what we were doing.”
Both Lima and Ramos were involved in the Running Start Program at the Community College of Rhode Island this year, a dual enrollment program that allows high school seniors to study at CCRI full-time.
Ramos said the back-andforth was sometimes challenging, because she would go to Davies one morning every two weeks to work on her senior project.