Zinn Amos, senior at Provident Catholic High School, studies medicine in Vietnam and wants to become a surgeon

Not all high school interns in a hospital in Vietnam start a medical club or develop their own tutoring business. But Zinn Amos is not your ordinary teenager.

Staff at Providence Catholic High School in New Lenox say this AP student from Frankfort takes responsibility independently and shows unwavering passion.

This summer, Amos spent two weeks at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Hue, Vietnam, where he followed doctors in surgery, internal medicine, family medicine, dentistry, cardiology, anesthesiology, neurology, traditional medicine and pharmacy. . He also got to try out various procedures during this Future Doctors Abroad program for high school students.

“We have to go interact with patients and see how doctors interact with patients, treat them and diagnose them,” Amos said.

Amos also had the opportunity to observe a colonoscopy, laryngoscopy, root canal and childbirth.

“It was very overwhelming at first,” he said of watching a childbirth. “A lot of people there even passed out.

“For me it was an amazing experience, it was really exciting to see something like this in person,” he said.

Dissecting a cadaver’s chest cavity and observing the various femoral arteries was also fascinating to Amos.

“Some of the things that I thought were going to overwhelm me, I was just really interested in…I wasn’t put off or anything like that,” he said.

At the hospital, Amos and his high school classmates learned about some of the ancient practices still used in medicine there, including cutting, breaking down lemongrass and boiling it to create essential oils, as well as acupuncture.

“It was really, really interesting,” Amos said. We learned how they use the yin and yang system, where different parts of the body correspond to yin or yang and they treat them with things like massage therapy or acupuncture accordingly to maintain a balance.

Learning about the culture, meeting Vietnamese and enjoying the food were also benefits of the trip.

Even back in school, Amos’ high school years aren’t the norm. He organizes speakers for his bimonthly medical club, including medical professionals.

Somehow, he also finds time to be on the math team, Scholastic Bowl team, and student council, and to help out as a student ambassador, introducing students eighth grade in school. He is also president of the National Honor Society of Provident.

Amos said he hopes to major in biomedical engineering and eventually work as an orthopedic surgeon.

“The bones, the muscles, the joints are the main driving force of the body,” Amos said. “That’s how our body works.”

Kyle Murphy, his first-year guidance counselor and now college counselor, continues to be amazed at Amos’ drive and relentless desire to gain experience for his future career.

Murphy is also a basketball coach and has Amos on his team.

He said he watched Amos grow from an insecure freshman to an outgoing leader.

“Some students just go through the steps to get there, while Zinn just goes beyond that,” Murphy said. “He pushed himself to experiment with things in the medical field and set foot in this world to gain experience and see if it’s something he wants to do.”

Rather than just mentor children, Amos started his own business and a website, Murphy said.

“He really promotes himself and does it professionally and I think that’s something that stands out in everything he does,” Murphy said. “You talk about kids doing 100%…Zinn doing things 110%.”

Janice Neumann is a freelance journalist for the Daily Southtown.