Senior Spotlight: Mimi Haripottawekul

Mention “edamame” to an average Exonian, and they’ll think of a vegetable. Mimi Harripottawekul will tell you about a machine she built with friends to recycle plastic into 3-D printing material. Mention “chemistry” to another Exonian, and they’ll tell you it’s one of three core sciences. Harripottawekul will tell you it’s a means to fight against systemic inequality and struggles in her home country of Thailand. To Haripotawekul, learning is not an exercise in thought; it’s another step in her mission to right injustices she has observed.

Harripottawekul came to Exeter from Thailand. At her previous school, she took an integrated science course combining biology, physics and chemistry that “wasn’t really structured,” deterring her from science. 

But she had always felt a desire to help others, leading her to begin a charity called “Harri,” where she would handknit yarn hats and then donate them to cancer patients. One trip to drop off hats would lead her to her inevitable calling: science. 

With her mother, she traveled to the local government hospital and saw masses waiting together in one hallway. At the time, she asked her mother, “Hey, Mom, why are there so many people? Why can’t they go to another hospital?”

“They get free or almost free treatment here, so they can’t afford to go to another place. Some of them have to wait up to 14 hours just to see a doctor for urgent cases,” her mother explained.

Looking back at the crowds huddled in the waiting room, she realized she needed to make a change.

“I’m so privileged. I can go to private hospitals and it’s going to be fine,” she said. “The main reason I want to be a doctor is to confront the systematic issues in Thailand that make the shortage of doctors.” Harripottawekul does not want to practice medicine for mere profit but to “make a real change” and work in the public health sector.

Harripottawekul arrived as a new upper and was immediately immersed in science. Knowing she wanted to go into healthcare, she decided to enroll in Chemistry 500, which required a prerequisite of Physics 300. 

“I’ve known I wanted to be a doctor for quite a while, but what if I don’t actually like science?” she questioned. But the Harkness method, which encouraged her to speak out and engage in her classes, “reaffirmed to me that I have the ability to do this. I have a dream. I want to keep going.”

Harripottawekul has become an independent leader to those around her. ““She is so fearless when it comes to saying things, I don’t think she cares what others think of her sometimes,” senior Mia Glinn said. “She’ll do whatever is on her mind and say whatever she thinks. What I love about her so much is that she’s just on her own wave and she’s riding it.” 

Since then, she has mixed science with her own creativity, resulting in internships in clinics for low-income patients and tackling sustainability issues in the Design Lab. 

“I worked with two teammates Panda and Molly, and we built a machine named Edamame. It was basically a machine you could put PLA [plastic] in, and then you can extrude 3D printing filament out from it,” she said. “It was a fun journey to experiment and build the product. A lot of hours spent in the design lab until we finally went to present. Although we didn’t win the big award, we still won something. And it wasn’t even the end that mattered. It’s kind of cliché, but the journey is what matters, not the destination.”

She wasn’t entirely sure what kind of doctor she wanted to be, initially considering dermatology. But looking to her own family helped her realize her true passion.“My dad’s side of the family has a very long history of cancer. During last year, spring term, my grandmother passed away. And I was having a very hard time. It was a very hard thing for me to process back then,” she said. “I found out my other grandmother had cancer but fought through it, and survived somehow, but she’s really sick now. My aunt—she also got cancer, and the doctor said to me she won’t make it past this year. Honestly, I have a very high likelihood of getting cancer.”

After realizing the extent to which cancer ran in her family, she began to think of the millions of other families feeling the same pain as her. “Knowing the fear that [cancer] causes to the patient and to that patient’s family, I want to help because I want to develop this field further in any way possible.” 

Her passion is easily noticed to anyone around her. “I see that she really wants to make a difference in the world. She works so hard everyday,” dormmate and upper Jasmine Liao said. “I remember the first time I met her, she was two weeks ahead of her work, and I could never do that.” 

Math Instructor Gwyneth Coogan agreed. “You know she’s in the room when she’s in the room,” she said.

Harripottawekul still makes time for her non-science passions: the khim, an instrument indigenous to Thailand which she describes as a “hammered dulcimer,” and interacting with the elderly. She intersected the two through trips with her old school by playing the khim at nursing homes.

She described the moment where she realized what exactly she was giving to them. “In Thailand, there’s a stigma against nursing homes. In Asia, there’s a lot of emphasis on parents living with their kids when they’re really old.The people who are at nursing homes are seen as abandoned,” she said. “We played this one song that was from a Thai soap opera, and apparently a lot of them watched it. I was playing, and this one moment just like stuck out to me: I looked down, then I looked up and the smiles were so wonderful.”

Harripottawekul looks to the future with certainty, knowing one day she will be a doctor. “It’s not just a job, it’s a calling. It’s something that you have to dedicate your whole life to if you want to actually focus on this one goal,” she said. She encourages those with similar aspirations to start now. “You’re going to be giving back to the community anyway when you’re grown up, why don’t you just start now? You have the ability to make change. Big or small.”