Reflections from Michaela Johns

Discover interests you didn’t know you had

Michaela Johns, who is graduating with a BSc Honours in Health Studies, won an award every year from 2018 to 2021 during her degree, but she says the best part was simply having the opportunity to discover interests she did not know she had.

“I took a philosophy course on the Ethics of End-of-Life Care on a whim one year to fulfill an elective credit,” Johns says. “If someone had told me in my first semester that I was going to have an aptitude for philosophy and bioethics, I would not have believed it.”

In addition to the Highest Academic Achievement Award in the School of Public Health and Health Systems upon graduation, Johns received a School of Public Health and Health Systems Upper-year Scholarship, the Lois Matthews Scholarship, the Applied Health Sciences Health Scholarship and a Waterloo Merit Scholarship.

Michaela, who took an Option in Aging, completed an independent study in her 4B term, proposing a novel approach to chronic pain assessment and management, and elsewhere researched the inequitable access to specialized palliative care for persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses. “I see needs and I am driven to see solutions,” Johns says.

She has some advice for students who wish to go to graduate school. “Strive for the highest marks right from the start. When you get to third and fourth year, with a clearer idea of your direction and decide to go to graduate school, you will have more doors open to you. It is very difficult to bring up a lower average in only two years.”

Johns has accepted an offer from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health to pursue her Master of Bioethics. She was awarded a coveted $10,000 scholarship in her program for her academic achievement and potential in the field. Johns is grateful to the professors who supported her graduate school applications, including Annalise Ferro, Stephanie Gregoire and Chris Perlman.

She is one of 457 Faculty of Health undergraduate and 86 graduate students convocating this term.