2026 Scholarship Reception Keynote Address

The 2026 Scholarship Luncheon featured a keynote address from 2025 scholarship recipient Samantha Rose. The following is a lightly edited transcript of her inspiring keynote address at the Summit College Club 2026 Scholarship Reception on June 7, 2026.

A year ago, I stared blankly at a Google Doc as I attempted to squeeze all my life's ambitions and aspirations into a 250-word synopsis — a synopsis that, after weeks of re-crafting, rewording, and employing a thesaurus to change the very words I hoped would determine my future, had to somehow answer the question: "Why Duke?"

I knew my essay would be one of thousands. A college admissions officer would spend about 33 seconds absent-mindedly skimming it while propping their feet up on their desk, coffee in hand, scanning for reasons to advocate for me in deliberations. Writing my essay, I marketed myself like a product, selling strangers my hopes, dreams, and everything in between.

Here was my pitch:

"I envision western blotting with Dr. Ji at the Center for Translational Pain Medicine, taking advantage of Duke's unwavering commitment to rare disease research as a NORD Rare Disease Center of Excellence. As I collaborate with Duke's Institute for Brain Sciences to unravel the little-understood relationship between pain and inflammation, I hope that our discoveries lead to novel therapeutics for chronic pain disorders in Research Triangle Park."

Behind that pitch was something much more personal than 12-point Times New Roman font. It was a little girl at the mall, pushing her mom's wheelchair and pretending not to notice the way people judged. At five years old, I wanted to believe that people were amazed by my strength — by the fact that I could push my mom through the mall by myself. But as I got older, I realized they weren't looking at me in awe. They were looking at the wheelchair and the unmoving, stick-thin woman sitting in it.

When my mom was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome — medicine's most painful disease — I was too young to understand what those words meant. Terms like glial cells, myelin sheath, infusions, and ketamine floated around our house like a language I had not yet learned. I knew my mom's monthly trips to Massachusetts General Hospital meant something serious. I knew our family was different. I just did not yet understand why.

That understanding came slowly, through science. 10th grade AP Biology gave me mitochondria, neurotransmitters, and axonal signaling, and suddenly, CRPS became less of an untouchable mystery and more of a question I desperately wanted to answer. Science became my way of translating confusion into purpose.

So when I wrote about wanting to work in a chronic pain lab at Duke, I was not merely trying to sound ambitious. I was writing from the memory of every stare in that mall, every hospital trip I did not understand, and every moment I wished someone could give my mom an answer to the disease that had stolen so much from her.

During my first year at Duke, I took a small FOCUS genetics class of 18 students — a breath of fresh air from my 400-person psychology lecture. At the end of the semester, our professor challenged us to cold-email a Duke researcher from a list she provided and interview them to learn about their scientific journey.

For many days, I scrolled up and down that list blankly, frantically searching for a researcher who piqued my interest. But deep inside, I had an itch that needed to be scratched — numerous questions that had been left unanswered for generations.

I remembered the ambitions and aspirations I had recited in my "Why Duke?" essay, recalling all of the things that drew me towards Duke in the first place. The medical school less than two minutes away from the dorms. The proximity to North Carolina's Research Triangle. The Center for Translational Pain Medicine's groundbreaking research on CRPS.

I reached out and scheduled an interview with Dr. Ji, the same researcher I had mentioned in my essay. I couldn't shake the smile off my face when he eagerly gave me a tour of his lab, or when he offered to help me design my very own study on the therapeutic benefits of stem cell-driven neuroregeneration.

I walked out of that lab feeling like I had just stepped into the very future I had once tried to compress into 250 words.

What had once been a sentence in an admissions essay — carefully edited, probably over-edited, and sent into the unknown server of the Common Application — had become real. I was no longer just writing about wanting to study pain and inflammation. I was standing in a lab where people were actually doing it. I was no longer only the little girl pushing her mom's wheelchair through the mall, wondering why no one had answers. I was beginning, in some small way, to search for them myself.

In the classroom, Duke challenged me more than I expected. I learned very quickly that college science is not about memorizing a neat set of answers. It is about learning how much you do not know, and still being brave enough to ask the next question. Whether I was studying organic chemistry or genetics, I found myself returning to the same purpose that brought me to Duke in the first place: understanding the body not just as a collection of systems, but as something deeply tied to a person's life, dignity, and humanity.

Some of the most important parts of my year happened outside the classroom. Duke taught me through late-night dorm conversations, two-hour meals, and friendships with people I never would have met otherwise. My friends study everything from mechanical engineering and public policy to digital design and computer science, and they come from Wisconsin, Chapel Hill, Minnesota, even Scotland, and everywhere in between.

Coming from Millburn, I thought I understood what it meant to be surrounded by driven students. But Duke showed me what it means to be surrounded by people whose ambitions are not only impressive, but entirely their own. Their different disciplines, cultures, hometowns, and lived experiences have made me more curious, more humble, and more aware that education does not only happen in classrooms. At Duke, I'm surrounded by a community of doers — of people who transformed their "Why Duke?" pitch into a reality.

That is also why this scholarship has meant so much to me.

When I received this award last year, it was not only much-needed financial support, but a vote of confidence at a time when I was standing on the edge of a completely new chapter. Before I had taken my first Duke class, before I had joined a lab, before I had built a community on campus, this scholarship reminded me that there were people who believed I belonged there.

For me, this scholarship was not merely a recognition of what I had already done. It was encouragement to keep becoming. To keep asking questions. To keep walking into labs, classrooms, and communities where I might feel intimidated at first, but where I also have something to contribute.

A year ago, my "Why Duke?" essay was a pitch. Today, it feels more like a promise — a promise to the little girl in the mall, to my mom, to the people who believed in me, and to myself. A promise that I will keep using science not only to understand disease and disability, but to serve the people living with it.

To this year's recipients, congratulations. I hope this scholarship reminds you that your dreams are worth investing in, even before they are fully realized. I hope it gives you confidence when you need it most. And I hope that, a year from now, you find yourself looking back with the same gratitude I feel today — realizing that the future you once imagined has already started becoming real.

Thank you again to everyone who makes this scholarship possible. I am so grateful for your generosity, your belief in me, and your commitment to supporting young women as we pursue the futures we once only dared to write about.

Thank you.