Sarah Huff was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease when she was a teenager.

To combat the chronic endometriosis, she joined the medical field that gave her a fighting chance against the pain.

Huff, 20, is currently a second-year student at Lamar University studying pre-med as an undergraduate in the biology and chemistry department.

“Anything to do with the medical aspect, I love,” she said. “I was battling some autoimmune diseases when I was younger, which are chronic and never go away. I realized that there were a lot of surgeries that I could have, but the most upkeep for those diagnosis are medication. Once I started seeing all the differences that medication could make for people, I decided to go in the pharmacy field.”

The Hamshire Fannett High School graduate spent a year at Stephen F. Austin in Nacogdoches before returning home to Southeast Texas last semester and enrolling at Lamar.

“I absolutely love it,” she said. “(Pre-med) is very hard, very stressful, but honestly I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

Huff said she is looking to join several medical organizations on campus in order to boost her extra-curricular roster.

“When I was at SFA, I was very active,” she said. “Since I came home, it’s been a struggle to move back, get a new job and get everything sorted out. I’m hoping to join Pills during the spring semester, which is Lamar’s pharmacy club and AMSA, the American Medical Student Association.”

Huff currently serves as a volunteer at the Port Arthur Public Library and is looking to expand her volunteering efforts into the community.

“I love reading,” she said. “Obviously, this is the best place to be. It’s also a very calm place to be. If we have downtime, I’m always welcomed to study. Also, we get a lot of really interesting people that I would never meet if I didn’t volunteer here. It really opened my eyes to the Port Arthur community.”

Alongside her school and volunteering efforts, Huff is also IV certified and hoping to land a job in a pharmacy soon.

“I want to go ahead and already start putting my skills to use,” she said. “I want to see the pharmacy techs in action. After I graduate from Lamar, I want to get into a really good pharmacy school. It’s extremely hard; it’s like getting into medical school.”

Huff said she is shooting to join the University of Houston or the University of Texas for graduate school, which are ranked No. 12 and No. 6 as the 2020 best pharmacy schools in the nation by the Education and Career Resource for the Pharmacy Field.

Once Huff finishes medical school, she said she would like to return to Port Arthur or Beaumont to do her residency.

“I want to give back to the area in anyway I can,” she said. “We’re trying to get back up there, but we’re struggling. My favorite quote is ‘bloom where you are planted.’

“We are a little town, some people have never even heard of Beaumont. So I’m applying to all these schools and doing all these things, and most of the people I meet are coming from these very big areas and name-brand schools. I just try to keep that in mind, because although some people may have more resources, I am doing what I can for my own community.”