Who am I and What am I doing here?

I am Nicholas Moscardelli, and I have lived in central/coastal New Jersey for most of my life. I think a large part of what made me who I am and why I’m at Northeastern is martial arts, specifically Shotokan Karate. Before college, I had been taking classes at the dojo in my town for about 8 years or so, and it had a large influence in shaping me into the type of person I am now. I would not exactly consider myself a super athletic person, at least not before high school, but one of the hardest physical challenges I’ve encountered was my black belt test in junior year of high school. It was about 3 hours of drills, sparring, exercises, performing movesets, and board breaks that were exhausting, yet once it was done, it felt like years of practice had paid off. Although karate has been a good source of martial arts knowledge and exercise for a large part of my life, it has also had an influence on my other interests and possibly why I chose Northeastern. A large component of martial arts is understanding how the human body moves and how to strengthen and improve that movement. A few years after I had started taking karate, I considered becoming a doctor because I wanted to learn more about the anatomical details behind how bones and muscles work. I was fortunate that the high school I attended had a lot of anatomy and healthcare-related classes to further help this interest. I also had the opportunity to shadow orthopedic surgeons during my senior year mentorship, one of which happened to be the same doctor that examined my broken clavicle in fourth grade. Orthopedic surgery is primarily focused on operating on bones and muscles in patients, and it’s currently the specialty I want to pursue. When I was researching colleges before applying, I found that Northeastern has a really good health science program, and I had already really wanted to go to a school in Boston since it has very well known hospitals and medical centers. When I got accepted a few months later, one of the deciding factors that made me especially excited to attend was at Admitted Students’ day. There was a panel set up with students discussing their experiences with NUin and semesters after, and one of the guys there had a very similar co-op experience to my senior year mentorship with orthopedic surgeons. What made it even better was that he got paid. From then on, I knew that Northeastern would be a really good fit for me. Even spending my first semester abroad, I was involved with medicine through my anatomy class at University College Dublin and their Medical Society. Now that I’m back in Boston, I’m even more excited to get involved with Northeastern’s medical and health clubs like NUEMS and Vital. My interests in medicine and orthopedic surgery have stemmed back to when I started taking karate in middle school, and I hope to maintain my involvement with both health care and martial arts in my future semesters at Northeastern.