"Life might not always go on a straight path, but you will always make it to your destination."
Those words come from Christian Barksdale — a published author, aspiring cardiologist, and recent UNC Chapel Hill medical program alumnus. But before he was any of those things, he was a Hawkes Learning Student Ambassador at Mississippi Valley State University: a young man who took a chance on an internship and, somewhere between the practice problems and professor conversations, started becoming the person who would one day write that line.
*Quotes lightly edited from interview for content and clarity
Christian Barksdale first heard about Hawkes Learning through his college algebra professor, Dr. Stevens. "She told me about the opportunity," he said. "She sent me an email about it after I did really well in her class. And I was okay, yeah, sure — I'll shoot my shot and apply for the internship." A few months later, he got the call. "I couldn't believe it. That was awesome."
He served as a Hawkes Student Ambassador in Fall 2023 at Mississippi Valley State. To qualify, ambassadors must have completed at least one Hawkes course — and Christian Barksdale had done that with college algebra. What made him a natural fit for the role wasn't just his grades, though. It was his mindset.
Coming into college, Christian Barksdale was already intentional. "My mom always told me, if you have a really great GPA, then you'll be able to choose," he said. "Whenever you want to pivot, you'll set yourself up really nicely. And so I really just came into college really focused. I was just like, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to put my best foot forward and really just try to make the GPA representative of what type of person I am."
As an ambassador, Christian Barksdale connected with faculty who were using Hawkes and helped them get the most from the platform — building the kind of relationships he'd later call foundational.
"My favorite thing about it was being able to connect with the professors that are actually using Hawkes and build those relationships," he said, "and getting competency on skill sets outside of the classroom — like learning how to help people manage it and help people learn how to utilize it to the best of their ability."
He credited Hawkes itself for getting him there in the first place. "I feel like Hawkes is just the top program I've done," he said. "Not only with the awesome feedback, but just the amount of practice questions you could do... Everything just felt so hands on." The step-by-step error feedback, in particular, stood out: "I really just love being able to actually read through, go step by step, compare it to what I've written down, what I thought was right, and just see okay, where I made a mistake and how they explained it. The way Hawkes breaks everything down makes it so simple — and in fact, that's the reason I was so successful, especially in that course."
Christian Barksdale graduated from Mississippi Valley State in December 2025. What came next was not a straight line.
"The summer before I actually wrote the book was really tough for me," he said. "I was trying to navigate the pre-medical journey, and I was kind of just getting overwhelmed. At the time I was really struggling to land an internship. I was really struggling to get a job as well. So it was just kind of a lot of things accumulating at once."
He paused on the weight of that season. "I kind of felt like I was disappointing myself and all the other people that poured into me…so it just wasn't really a great space for me at the time."
Then came the moment that changed everything.
"I was just sitting outside one time, just reading my Bible, just looking for something," he said. His older brother — who, by Christian Barksdale's own description, doesn't really talk much — came home from work and stopped. "He was just like, 'Stay motivated.' He just gave me some really great encouragement. And it made me think about the people who might not have a great brother like I do — the people who might still be fighting these battles but no one else knows it."
So he decided to do something about it.
"I'll start first with Doctor Madhere," he said. "He said something really profound that really stuck with me. It was like, 'Once you see what's possible, you can't unsee it.' So it's like, once you know that you can achieve this goal, once you know that it's possible for you to do this and you know how to get there, you won't stop seeing it. You'll be even more determined. You can't just ignore that part of you that wants to achieve that."
Then there was Dr. McFadden — a doctor from Mississippi, from a small town, who took the MCAT four times before getting the score she needed. "No matter what, she just kept going," Christian Barksdale said. "If she didn't get the score she wanted this time, right back to studying. Just the perseverance was really inspiring. And just seeing how she was able to be so successful."
For Christian Barksdale, the book is ultimately the message he wishes someone had handed him during that hard summer. "I just want people to know that your life might not always go on a straight path, but you will always make it to your destination," he said. "Life has its highs, it has its lows, but you have to be able to take both and really just appreciate life, appreciate the journey — not just the destination. And that you're bigger than your biggest problem. Your failure, or whatever setback you may experience, does not define you. You're worth it. You're awesome how you are. And whatever you're going through, you will get through it."
When Christian Barksdale looks back at his time as a Hawkes Ambassador, he sees threads connecting it directly to the person he's become.
"I feel like Hawkes is what got me a lot more comfortable talking to professors," he said. "Just being able to have a conversation with the people over the course. I feel like that really helped me get out of my shell. It could be kind of intimidating. But once you actually start engaging in those conversations, you can just see that they're humans too."
Those conversations mattered more than he realized at the time. "These are some of the professors that ended up writing my letters of recommendation," he said. "So I really feel like Hawkes set me up in that matter."
The networking skills he built as an ambassador also translated directly to writing the book, then to reaching out to strangers across the world and asking them to share their most hard-won stories.
After graduating, he kept pushing. This past summer, Christian Barksdale completed a medical school simulator internship at UNC Chapel Hill — nine weeks of medical school coursework and practical lab experience. His cohort came from across the country: mostly North Carolina, but Texas and beyond. "I feel like I've gotten fifty-five times richer just being with everybody," he said. "I feel like I've learned at least one thing from every single person I've met there."
More than the curriculum, what he took away from UNC was something harder to quantify. "I feel like I proved to myself that I can handle the curriculum," he said. "I was kind of always nervous, like, okay, maybe I can't handle it. Maybe once I get there, I won't be able to keep up. Just being able to prove that to myself that I can get there, pass, and be successful. That was monumental to me."
He's leaning toward cardiology. "The heart is really fascinating to me," he said. "And that got reinforced during my internship. We had a short cardiovascular block and just seeing how the heart works and everything — it's really fascinating. So that's what I'm leaning to right now."
Back home in Cleveland, Mississippi — about 45 minutes from Mississippi Valley State — Christian Barksdale is preparing for the MCAT, gathering clinical hours, and working to put his book into as many hands as possible. He wants to do more book signings, more mentorship, more presentations. "I really try to touch the youth in my community as well," he said.
His advice to students who might be right where he was — uncertain, stretched thin, questioning the path — sounds a lot like the way he described his first instinct about the Hawkes internship: I'll shoot my shot.
"I'm just very happy to have done it," he said. "I'm blessed to have the opportunity."
Hearts and White Coats by Christian Barksdale is available now on Amazon.
Read Mississippi Valley State University's feature on Christian Barksdale here.