Amy Waters will celebrate her 41st birthday with a gift to herself — a medical degree.
It’s been a long time coming. Waters, a mother of two, first dreamed of being a doctor as a middle schooler growing up in Toledo. In college, however, she fell into business, double majoring in international business and marketing at The University of Toledo.
CELEBRATING SUCCESS: UToledo recognizes the Class of 2025 with a series of stories featuring students receiving their degrees at spring commencement.
Later she would work in market research, earn an M.B.A. and settle into a career in higher education, assisting students from disadvantaged backgrounds as a program coordinator with TRIO Student Support Services.
Seeing those aspiring learners eagerly planning for their own future reignited her own ambitions.
“I had wanted to be a doctor my whole life,” she said. “If I didn’t pursue this, I would be saying goodbye to something that I had always wanted and it just didn’t feel right to me. I wanted to do something meaningful for someone else. I wanted my whole career to be about doing something for the greater good. Not trying to get into medical school would have been my biggest regret.”
So Waters started doing her research, identifying the prerequisite courses she would need for medical school and re-enrolling at UToledo to chase her dream.
After two intense years, she’d accumulated enough credits for an associate’s degree and was ready to apply for medical school.
She didn’t get in.
Undeterred, she stayed at UToledo for the Master’s of Science in Biomedical Sciences Program, which she completed in 2021 and again applied to medical school at UToledo.
This time, she was accepted.
Amy Waters, who will graduate with a medical degree on her 41st birthday, looks forward to a career serving the greater good.
“It was probably one of the happiest days of my life,” Waters said. “It was this realization that I can do this at my age with kids, having had a different career — I felt like so many doors opened for me that day.”
She will graduate from UToledo with her medical degree on May 16, which also is her 41st birthday, and soon begin her residency training in family medicine with Mercy St. Lukes Hospital in Perrysburg.
Dr. Coral Matus, an associate professor and associate dean for clinical undergraduate medical education in the College of Medicine and Life Sciences, has been impressed by Waters’ commitment to pursuing a lifelong dream.
“Just to be able to get your portfolio together to apply for medical school is a showstopper for a lot of people. That’s where they decide it’s not worth it,” Matus said. “To go through the application process and be accepted, I give her a lot of credit. It exhibits her resiliency and motivation to be in medicine and it’s been fun to see her grow. She’s going to be great connecting with patients and I’m really excited she’s going to stay in Toledo.”
While nearly three-quarters of all medical students nationwide wait at least a year after earning their undergraduate degree to begin medical school, data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that less than 6% of medical students are over the age of 28 when they begin their training.
Amy Waters celebrates Match Day with her 9-year-old son, Logan Bui, and a 10-year-old daughter, Lydia Bui. Waters will soon begin her residency training in family medicine with Mercy St. Lukes Hospital in Perrysburg.
Being a parent of two young children is even rarer. Only 1% of students accepted into medical school in 2024, for example, reported having two or more dependents. Waters has a 9-year-old son, Logan Bui, and a 10-year-old daughter, Lydia Bui.
Though that brings challenges that most traditional students don’t have to contend with, Matus said it also confers benefits.
“She has the maturity that comes from real-life experience. It’s a different perspective and gives her maybe a little more empathy and a little more introspection about what her role in medicine and her role in the world really is,” Matus said. “She’s going to endear herself to her patients, develop those relationships quickly and have a great impact on the community.”
Waters plans to set up her post-residence practice in Toledo, giving back to the community that’s given her so much. She’s currently looking to specialize in sports medicine — an interest that goes all the way back to her high school cross country days.
After falling in love with running as a freshman, she missed her entire sophomore season with a stress fracture, wondering if she’d ever be able to run again.
“I had this amazing sports medicine physician who provided me with so much hope and support that I would be able to return to running, and now 20-plus years later, I’m still running,” she said. “I want to be able to give that same hope and support to other athletes.”
As she looks back at her time in medical school, Waters sees a significant amount of personal growth. While balancing the responsibly of being a mom with the demanding schedule of a medical student wasn’t easy, it was worth it.
“One of the most important things is it’s showing my kids that they can do whatever they want to do, and it’s changing that narrative for them,” she said.
Only 2.8% of U.S. physicians are black females, making Waters a demographic outlier. However, in her children’s eyes, she’s the norm, not the exception.
“They’ve asked me if men can be surgeons or deliver babies,” she said with a laugh. “It’s so much different for my kids, because they grew up seeing me as a doctor. Their definition of a doctor is me, it’s not somebody else.”
