Aviophobia (Leonard McCoy)

1. Katelyn Kirk

Year: 2248
"Come on Kate, you can do this," she mumbled to herself, pulling her strawberry blonde hair into a ponytail to keep her hair out of her face as she struggled to find the motivation to finish the last assignment her senior level genetics course.  Early on in life, Katelyn knew that she wanted to be a doctor.  It's all she ever wanted to do.  Once she she heard stories about her dad, she revised her plan to being a doctor in Star Fleet, in spite of her enormous fear of flying.

Up until she and her twin brother Jim were eight years old, their mom had never really told them anything about their dad, just that he had died the day they were born.  On their eighth birthday, their mom finally decided to tell them more about what happened the day they were born.  Kate and Jim both were so inspired by the bravery that their dad had shown in the twelve minutes that he had been captain of the USS Kelvin that they both decided Star Fleet would be in their future.  Jim, of course, had aspirations toward being a captain, but Kate wanted to be the chief medical officer of a starship.  She couldn't imagine anything better than being able to take care of people who were giving up their lives to explore and expand the universe, and make peace with all they came in contact with.

From that day, she put all her focus into achieving her goal.  She and Jim had talked about it a lot.  Since she wanted to be a medical officer, that meant that she would need to have an undergraduate degree in biology with a premedicine emphasis, a doctorate in medicince, and a three year medical residency before she could enroll in Star Fleet Medical.  She and Jim really wanted to be able to enter Star Fleet at the same time, and Jim set a goal age of twenty years old, so that meant that Kate had to have all of that medical training done by then.  So, she got right to work.

Kate worked ahead through accelerated classes and graduated high school by the time she was thirteen.  She immediately enrolled in the college closest to their home and started her undergraduate program in premedicince.  Between summer classes and the dual credit that she earned in high school, she was working on her last course to finish her degree and would be graduating with her undergraduate degree at the young age of fifteen years old.  This gave her two busy years to try to squeeze in all of medical school so that she could finish her required three year residency by the time she was twenty.  It was a stretch, but she felt confident she could do it after all the other things she had done so far.

Jim continue to enjoy life at a leisurely pace.  He didn't have to rush through high school and would even have two years after high school to explore and travel before he joined Star Fleet.  She sometimes envied his easier decision to be an officer rather than a doctor, but Kate knew at her heart that she simply wouldn't enjoy anything other than being a doctor.  Since she and Jim wanted to stay close through their Star Fleet Academy experience, that meant that she would have to put in a lot more work ahead of time than he would.

She rubbed her eyes to try to wake herself up some more as she looked at the clock and saw it change to 11:35.  She groaned, then said to herself, "Alright, paper's due at midnight.  You've got twenty-five minutes, Kate.  Get to it," then got to work finishing her paper.

Year: 2253
It had been so much harder to try to finish medical school in the course of two years than Kate had anticipated, but she managed to do it.  Truly, the hardest part of medical school was having to move away from home.  She'd never left her hometown of Riverside, Iowa but the closest medical school was two hours away.  There would have been no way for her to commute back and forth every day, so she had to move to Des Moines so she could complete her schooling and her residency.  That meant that she and Jim would be separated from each other for five years, then they would be able to join Star Fleet once she finished her three year residency.