Annual Pub 2023 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 50
K I R K K E R K O R I A N S C H O O L O F M E D I C I N E AT U N LV
BEATING LOW
EXPECTATIONS
B Y PA U L H A R A S I M
W
hat Irwin Munoz didn’t do – join a Las Vegas
criminal street gang as some friends and relatives
did – freed him up to not only become the 昀rst in
his family to graduate from high school, but also
to become a UNLV graduate and a member of the
Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine Class of 2025.
Yet he says resisting peer pressure was easier to handle than
overcoming the societal negativity toward the poor, as well as the
self-doubt that often cripples the impoverished – both are frequent
byproducts of grinding poverty, a phenomenon which social
researchers say can smother dreams of a better life even before
they’re formalized in the mind’s eye.
