Pressure to like engineering. To enjoy computer science. Anything other than art. In the end for senior Dishita Bajaj it all came down to passion. During her high school career, Bajaj discovered her interest in medicine after taking classes like biology and medicine, and blended it with her childhood dream of being a painter to create medical illustrations. In the future, Bajaj dreams of opening her own medical drawings gallery and study neurology.
“You don’t see science and art clashing a lot together,” Bajaj said. “I’ve decided to bring forward this new idea where I take these two completely opposite fields and kind of smush them together.”
The senior discovered her passion for art in her early childhood and continues to pursue painting, drawing, clay, origami, and more recently, medical illustrations. Over the years, Bajaj has competed in art contests, like National Scholastic Art & Writing, Congressional Art Competition, and Visual Art Scholastic Event, and commissioned pieces as she pursued her artistic dreams.
“Starting freshman year, I actually wanted to be an animator at Disney,” Bajaj said. “It was this massive childhood dream.”
Shifting to sophomore year and discovering her love for biology, Bajaj joined Health Occupations Students of America. She is now the head of Nightingale House after years of competing in Area I for Clinical Specialty and organizing interactive meetings.
“I was made to help people. I was made to provide service,” Bajaj said. “That’s when I found myself being more interested in medicine, which is why I joined HOSA.”
Despite getting more and more invested in medicine, Dishita did not give up her art aspirations and combined these two strengths in her AP Art Portfolio on “The Human Experience Portrayed Through Human Anatomy”. She drew 12 medical illustrations depicting the human body and received a five on the exam.
“My drawings show the overall beauty of the human body, which I feel like a lot of us don’t appreciate,” Bajaj said. “Getting that high score, it kind of validated the fact that [medical illustration] is something that you can carry forward.”
Last year, the senior also started her own summer program “Our Bodies Through Art,” where kids from her local community are able to learn about biology and anatomy in a form of little art projects.
“It’s not actually the subject that’s boring, it’s just the way you teach it,” Bajaj said. “So I figured if we could incorporate more creative ways to teach people, maybe they can actually understand the material better.”
The same year, Bajaj settled on studying neurology after discovering that many of her loved ones’ lives had been cut short because of brain disease.
“I want to open my own gallery with medical drawings someday,” Bajaj said. “Hopefully making the medical world a little bit more colorful.”
