It was a full-circle moment for one soon-to-be medical school graduate.
Shay Taylor-Allen learned last Friday that she had matched with her first-choice residency pick, Yale School of Medicine, a hospital that has played an outsized role in her life.
Taylor-Allen wasn't just born there, she also worked there as a janitor when she was 18, she told ABC News.
The 32-year-old shared a video clip of her joyous reaction to being matched on Instagram, where it has quickly gone viral with more than 3.7 million views and counting.
"I was jumping up and down to the point I think the concrete was going to break," Taylor-Allen told ABC News of her excitement.
Taylor-Allen, who attends Howard University College of Medicine, said it feels "surreal" to be returning to her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut, for her upcoming residency.
"I am still just feeling like I'm in a dream, because I could have never imagined that I'll be going back to the same hospital I was not only born at, but a janitor at, to be a doctor for my community," she said.
Taylor-Allen said she didn't always know she wanted to go to medical school and was motivated to become a doctor after her experience helping her mom when she was sick.
"It wasn't until my sophomore year [in college, when] my mom became ill, that I realized that I wanted to become a doctor," she said.
Taylor-Allen said she was working as a janitor at Yale's hospital while her mom was sick and mentioned her story to the former hospital CEO, whose office she cleaned. She said the CEO was able to assist her and her family, and that experience inspired her to see how she could advocate for and work to help others.
"I [saw] firsthand how advocacy worked, and I knew I wanted to do that one day. I was like, whoa, just reaching out to [the former hospital CEO], completely changed everything [for] my mother," she recalled.
Taylor-Allen is expected to graduate from Howard in May and join Yale's Department of Anesthesiology later this year.
"We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Shay Taylor-Allen who matched to our Yale Department of Anesthesiology Residency. She will join a community of talented colleagues who are dedicated to patient care, education, investigation, and service to our community," Dr. Lisa Leffert, chair of the Department of Anesthesiology at Yale School of Medicine and physician-in-chief of anesthesiology at Yale New Haven Hospital, told ABC News in a statement.
For other young women looking to follow in her footsteps, Taylor-Allen said she encourages them to keep going, even when others tell them "no."
"We can do anything that we put our minds to -- and people of color specifically, we're needed in [the medical] field," she said. "People that look like us [are] needed, and our patients are waiting for us to do it."
