She’Ll Graduate From CV - And Sfcc Chrissy Murphy Gets Head Start With Running Start

As a pre-med student, Chrissy Murphy faces 10 years of higher education.

So, as a high school junior last year, she did the only sensible thing. She enrolled as a fulltime Running Start student at Spokane Falls Community College.

Murphy is graduating from Central Valley High School this spring with a 3.96 grade-point average - and graduating from SFCC with a 3.7 gpa.

“It was an opportunity to cut back on those years and challenge myself at the same time,” she said.

Murphy, who is one of the first in her family to graduate from college, will take her AA degree to Central Washington University in the fall. There, she’ll do her pre-med work. In two years, she hopes to enter the University of Washington medical school.

Running Start classes gave Murphy a big push into the adult world in another way, she says. Class speeches that used to be about family vacations were, all of a sudden, about major life experiences. Her college classmates ranged up to the age of her grandparents.

In her micro-economics class, discussions about price inflation included the memories of older students. Some could recite the wages they earned during the different U.S. presidents’ terms. The discussion became an instant history lesson for Murphy.

“Your eyes are opened, because you have such older classmates,” she said.

Wait a minute. Micro-economics for a pre-med student?

“You’re going to be dealing with money your whole life,” said Murphy. “Besides, you can’t survive knowing just your own field.” Deliberately, she took a variety of courses.

Is there a downside to leaving high school two years early?

“No matter how hard you try to be around your high school friends, you don’t see them as much as you’d like,” she said.

Why is Murphy pursuing medicine?

Since ninth-grade biology, she’s wondered about the human body, she says. She’s fascinated by questions like: “How does your body heal? And why does your body need vitamins?”

Now, with a little extra confidence that she can handle the college work, Murphy’s ready to go get more answers.