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I was lucky to be born into a family where my parents are science educators. My dad was a college chemistry professor and my mom a high school chemistry teacher who later became a vice principal. Growing up, I remember spending some of my after-school hours with my siblings (two younger brothers and a younger sister) in my Dad’s lab. It was so fascinating to see him and his graduate students conduct their science experiments. I went into medicine because my parents encouraged me to be a physician. But I have always been interested in science and understanding how things work.

I’ve always felt for people who don’t have the means or resources to do things for themselves. I try to give back as much as possible.

For several years following college, I was homeless in Dallas. I lived on a series of couches and my car for the better part of three to four years. I moved to Las Vegas to refocus my life and my direction. You wouldn’t think it’s the place people go to retreat from chaos. Fortunately, I don’t gamble and I had so many skills I could put to good use: hairstyling, makeup artist, being a personal stylist, executive assistant to several models, a professional photographer, writer, graphic designer, the list goes on.

Jordan Tropf, fourth-year medical student and winner of the 2017 Baltimore Marathon. (Photo by Ian Johnston)

Every fall, I pick one or two marathons to run. It’s something I like to do – I like to push myself and see how fast I can go. Running is something I look forward to at the beginning or end of every day and it gives me an opportunity to push myself outside of medical school.

I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I went to the Naval Academy with the goal of heading to medical school. After graduating in 2014, I moved to Baltimore to attend med school at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. I consider Baltimore my home. Since it’s my last year in med school, I finally decided to do my “home” race course: the Baltimore Marathon. I usually do the Marine Corps Marathon in D.C. around this time.

I started running in high school, when my cross country team won the state championship my senior year. I continued running at the Naval Academy, where I realized the 26.2-mile marathon was a better distance for me. I’ve been running marathons since my sophomore year there.

Training this summer was challenging. I was away for three months for orthopedic sub-internships at the three big Navy hospitals: Portsmouth, San Diego and Walter Reed. I tried to build in a run every day and get out on weekends for longer distances. (I did a lot of running in the dark.) I like discovering new places to run when I’m away.

During the race, I felt good until the second half. I knew what to expect, I knew the hills were coming, but it started to work me a little bit. I’m familiar with Dave Berdan, a previous year’s marathon winner. I knew he was working on running me down, so I just focused on keeping my lead.

After the second half of that course, I was very, very happy to be over the finish line. There was so much support on the course and it was great to see a summer of hard work pay off. It goes down in the books as one of my favorite races, and I can certainly see myself coming back.

After I graduate in May, I’ll hopefully (applications are in!) do my residency either in a military or a civilian orthopaedic surgery program, and then serve time as a Navy doctor. I’m familiar with orthopaedic injuries from years of running, and exposure to orthopaedics in the military and in med school led me to pursue it as my specialty. It's also been great to see the amazing impact that surgeries and rehab have on patients' lives. This especially motivated me to pursue this specialty.

The blue Navy singlet is my race shirt. I wear it to every race I do. Since I ran on the Navy team a few years ago, it’s good to wear my home colors. It's an honor to represent the U.S. Navy. My favorite race of all time is the Marine Corps Marathon, which I have run in the past with the All-Navy marathon team. It’s always fun and it adds an extra level of competition. This year, though, I spectated and cheered on my fiancé, Hannah, as she ran it for the second time.

Eventually I want to hit all six major world marathons. I’ve never done a marathon internationally but want to do the ones in London, Berlin and Tokyo.

The big thing about running is that I do it for fun. My priorities are being a good med student and, in the future, being a great doctor. I definitely intend to continue running and dropping my times, no matter what my future holds.

I am a nontraditional graduate student. In my case that meant that after completing high school, I did not immediately go to college. For me, it took many years before I could. Our family couldn’t afford it and I wasn’t academically ready, so I began working in entry level jobs in fast food. Eventually I worked my way up the ladder and became manager of a training store, supervising crews of over 40 people at a time. While I wouldn’t say I enjoyed every aspect, I really loved working with my colleagues and training them. The higher I rose in that industry, the more I began to approach a glass ceiling because I lacked a formal education. The next promotion offered was to become a district manager, and this position would include a gigantic workload. Realizing that advancement would lock me into this industry, I did some soul-searching and really looked at my life as a whole. I asked myself, “Before my life ends, what are going to be my contributions to the world?” As a fast-food manager, I realized that I was selling things that were convenient, but typically impacted people's health long-term. I’ve seen people in terrible health, going back and forth to the hospital telling me things like, “The doctor says I really shouldn’t be eating this, but I can’t stop.” To me, it started sounding almost like we were selling a drug, not just convenient food.

I had a personal realization that the fast-food business isn’t helping to improve peoples’ lives; it had the danger of making them worse. In contrast, I wanted to make an impact and make people’s lives better. This desire led me to recognize that I wanted to be in the medical field, but not necessarily as a medical doctor. As a problem solver, biomedical engineering was the best option.

I had a lot of fears and doubts about going to college after working for years in industry. I am a first-generation college student. I enrolled at a community college, did well, and was asked to serve as a tutor for almost every subject they had available. I was thriving and realized once again that teaching and training people is what I love. I might have stopped after completing an associate degree, but my professors urged me to transfer to the University of Arizona. At the time, I honestly thought that was a high, lofty goal, but I took a shot and got accepted to their biomedical engineering program.

Around the same time, I saw on the news that there is a special biomaterial powder you can put on people’s wounds that could literally regrow fingertips. Recognizing how many wounded warriors and other people have lost limbs from disease, I knew regenerative medicine was something that truly resonated with me. The healing of tissues and organs and unlocking the body’s potential to do so became my passion.

I participated in an educational pipeline program at the University of Arizona, which helps underrepresented minority students transition to graduate programs. Although we all had the academic merit to attend graduate school, many of us were clueless on how the process works and how to improve our applications. Although I really resisted it, the program leaders encouraged me to apply for various graduate programs at prominent schools such as Johns Hopkins. I applied to other universities that I thought were a more realistic match and Johns Hopkins was more of a ‘reach’ school. To my shock, Johns Hopkins invited me to come in for interviews and now here I am—a Ph.D. student in the top-ranked graduate biomedical engineering program in the country. I love saying that. It was all thanks to those mentors and coaches who supported and encouraged me to apply in the first place.

What’s a day in the life of a Ph.D. student look like? I’m a second year Ph.D. student in the laboratory of Dr. Jennifer Elisseeff, director of the Translational Tissue Engineering Center (TTEC). I’ll start my day in the lab, try to catch up on emails, make plans for the week in terms of experiments, then go to class. Throughout the day it’s often a choice between homework and research. I almost always pick research. There is always something to be done: from isolating RNA from tissue, to figuring out gene expressions of an animal model to see if a particular wound treatment is causing it to heal or regenerate versus scarring, to characterizing immune system cell populations in specific tissues through flow cytometry. There are multiple meetings depending on the day, but I would say things are split among planning and preparing for experiments and performing them.

Of course, I do spend time outside the lab. Alone or with my fiancé, Ashlie, I love to travel, hike, read, write and find creative solutions to problems. This year I am also one of the co-presidents of the BME Ph.D. Student Council. I am a member of several clubs, and a recruiter and mentor for the new P-TECH program that Johns Hopkins works with at Dunbar High School. I tend to keep myself very busy, but I try to make sure to keep things in a healthy balance. Weekends are the best time for this as Baltimore has so many fun festivals and community events going on.

Looking to the future, I have a sincere interest in being a teacher. I feel that it’s my chance to give back. Perfectly in line with this, I was recently awarded a fellowship through the National Science Foundation’s graduate research fellowship program, which supports providing a broader impact to the communities in which our research occurs. When I work with students who come from the community and our undergraduate programs and they learn fast, that sparks my energy and excitement.

Experiences like this make me want to come to the laboratory and do more. I am currently living my dream: I wake up every morning and I love what I do!