His lifetime goal was medicine. He wasn't a genius he just worked his butt off and was the Valedictorian of his class as well as an all state hockey defenseman on his schools state championship hockey team. His school was Grosse Poine Liggett, a highly rated private school on Detroit's east side.
All the Ivy league hockey teams tried to recruit him but because he wanted to play and not sit out his freshman year, he chose Williams College which is a highly rated, small private school in Massachusetts ($84,000 per year with no tuition assistance). So he had fun playing hockey and finished in the top 10 of his class.
Now here's the kicker:
He applied to the University of Michigan medical school and by all intents and purposes, because of his exemplary academics, he should have been accepted. But he wasn't. Because of mandatory quotas, they had to allow minorities and foreign nationals before him. They told him while they couldn't accept him that year, they would accept him the following year.
So he said screw it. He had connections in the hockey world so he took off to Europe and played semi-pro hockey over there for a year. He fully intended to stay over there and have a try in the pros but his parents put a quick end to that thought and so he came home and enrolled at U of M.....
His medical training took him to the University of Pittsburgh for surgery then ultimately a Harvard fellowship in Thoracic surgery at Mass General hospital.......
He was just a hard working white kid