Grit, grace and glory.
That’s how Linda Huynh sums up her attitude toward life.
Huynh, a California native, is a first-generation college student. And this month, she received her PhD, the first of the two terminal degrees she is working toward, at commencement before returning to medical school to complete her MD. To relieve stress, she powerlifts – finishing second in her weight class at the 2021 USA Powerlifting Nebraska State Championships.
The motto, she said, applies to both academics and sports.
“Grit for the persistence, grace for the times that the grit doesn’t quite cut it, and then glory after all the hard work,” Huynh said.
Huynh is no stranger to grit. Her parents, who were Vietnam War refugees, had been talking about her going to college since she was young. Huynh’s interest in science and medicine also was heightened by the challenges facing her sister, who has congenital heart disease.
“Both of my parents, probably ever since I was young, had always dreamt this for me, that I would go off to college,” said Huynh, who earned her undergraduate degree at the University of California-Irvine. She worked to help pay for her tuition and finished in three years.
One of those jobs was working in the ER.
“That gave me exposure to everything that happened in both the community and the Vietnamese- American community, because it was a local hospital,” she said. And although Huynh had developed a love of research science as well – she was working as a clinical trials manager before she was admitted to UNMC – “the rest is history.”
Her sister had her third open-heart surgery in Huynh’s second year of college, further cementing her determination.
“I couldn’t bear seeing other families go through what my parents went through, in terms of having to navigate medicine in a foreign place, not really knowing the language and not having any physicians or nurses that look like them.”
During her job as a clinical trials manager, Huynh had earned a master’s in biomedical translational science, so she knew she wanted an MD-PhD program. She has found UNMC to be the perfect place to pursue her dream.
“I love the community,” she said. “I always tell incoming students, there’s never been anywhere else that I could cold email a faculty member and get a response guaranteed within 24 or 48 hours.”
With her PhD in hand, Huynh is looking forward to returning to her medical studies. And, in company with her husband, Olympic weightlighter Hans Leong, she continues to powerlift, as well.
“I just hit 350 (pounds) on a deadlift yesterday,” she said. “I’m very proud of that.”