The demanding schedule of a student-athlete might be rivaled only by that of a medical student. Next year, competitive swimmer Amie Barrow ’26 MD’30 will be able to compare the two firsthand when she begins classes at The Warren Alpert Medical School.

“I’m at practice all the time,” says Barrow, who swims breaststroke for the women’s swimming and diving team at Brown. “I’m always balancing that with classes. When the season’s finished by around March, I have a little bit more time.”

Since she’s been at Brown, Barrow has spent every summer swimming at the highest level—at the World Aquatics Championships in 2023 and 2025, and the Olympic Games in 2024, where she represented The Gambia in the 100-meter breaststroke. She was the first female swimmer ever to represent the West African nation, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Barrow, a health and human biology concentrator in the Program in Liberal Medical Education, says now that she’s “almost” retired from swimming, she hopes to shift her attention to clinical research at one of Brown’s affiliated hospitals this spring. An aspiring orthopedic surgeon, she co-authored a book chapter two years ago about integrating patient education into sport injury and rehabilitation and wants to continue that research.

“This research will help bridge the gap between theory and practice—the conceptual understanding of patient education presented in our chapter and its real-world implementation by orthopedic surgeons,” she says.

Balancing world-class athletics with coursework and research has taught Barrow important life lessons that she hopes to bring to her medical education and career. “You get out what you put in,” she says. “I do believe that a lot of skills I learned in swimming have translated into my schoolwork in terms of discipline, hard work, and knowing that you do a little bit every day and you’ll get better.”

Multinational

“My mom is Finnish and my dad is Gambian, and I was born in the United Kingdom,” Barrow says. The family moved to the Milwaukee suburbs when she was 8 years old.

In Deep

“I spend most of my time at the pool,” Barrow says. “There was a moment in time where my phone thought the address for the pool here was my home.”

Positive Mindset

On long, difficult days of balancing athletics with school, Barrow says, “I try to remember that this is something that I choose to do and it’s fun.”

Sport Doc

Barrow says she hopes to specialize in sports medicine, “as that would be the kind of patient population that I want to work with.”

Practice Makes Perfect

“I’m not on a meal plan anymore, so I’ve been cooking a lot and practicing for next year when I have my own apartment,” Barrow says.