From Lexington to Hollywood: UK biology alum shows how a general education can lead to writing for ‛General Hospital’

LEXINGTON, Ky. (July 23, 2024) — When Ashley Cook graduated with a biology degree from the University of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences, she thought her next step was medical school. Little did she know 16 years later she would receive a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Drama Series.  

“I thought I was going to be a doctor. I wanted to have a career that I was interested in and one that would do good in the world,” Cook said. “Med school is very competitive, and I was struggling to get in.”  

While Cook was waitlisted for medical school, she checked in with herself and thought about what it was she wanted to be doing and what would make her happy. “Since I wasn't in school at that time, I was reconnecting with my love of storytelling,” Cook said. “I was writing again and watching movies and TV shows. I started thinking that I would really like to write and, more specifically, I would like to write for the screen.” 

Cook joked about leaving one demanding career path for another with incredibly long odds. 

“By the time I was accepted to medical school, I had reassessed and decided that med school is too easy, I was going to move to Hollywood and become a screenwriter,” Cook said. 

Cook was admitted to medical school during the next cycle, but she opted to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Spalding University in Louisville. After graduation, she packed her apartment and moved to Los Angeles with her cat, Pebbles.  

Once in LA with the remainder of her student loans and what was left in her bank account, Cook had to find her first job, fast.  

“I had no experience working in entertainment. People looked at my resume and saw that I was fresh out of the University of Kentucky with a biology degree and then I had a master’s in screenwriting,” she said. “While a writing degree is great, I learned that in LA, they’re looking for more than that. They were hiring people with more practical experience in film production. I realized I was not going to jump in and be writing for the screen right away.” 

Cook’s first job was writing at a law firm. While working, she attended networking events and started meeting people who could help her build her resume and make more screenwriting contacts. Cook started volunteering on student films as a production assistant to gain more experience.  

“I quit my law firm job because I knew I needed to commit to being in film production,” Cook said. “It turned out to be the right decision because I ended up getting my first job at a production company as an assistant to one of the production executives. From there, I got my first job on a television show and it’s been going ever since.”  

Cook started working on the last season of “The Middle” as a production assistant. After that, she began climbing the ladder and worked her way to a writer’s assistant job on “General Hospital.” She then was promoted to a writer on the same show. It was on “General Hospital” that Cook was part of the team that won the 2024 Daytime Emmy for writing, which was given for work done during the show’s 60th anniversary.  

“It felt very validating that I made this insane choice to move to LA and become a screenwriter,” Cook said. “It’s nice to be recognized and to work with other writers to make a storyline that resonates.” 

Even Cook recognized the synchronicity that her first writing job was on a medical drama.  

“Having a degree in biology actually did help me a lot,” she said. “We definitely take a lot of creative license, but my understanding of science and experience in the research process gave me a foundation. Even when we’re completely making something up, I could still ground it in real science.”  

Cook’s work in a research lab at UK and the firsthand experience applying to medical school and taking the MCAT have tied directly into plot lines and character development on the show. But the college’s focus on liberal studies expanded her knowledge base for writing.  

“I took mythology and psychology classes, and I still think about those classes,” she said. “UK required you to take a writing course and I also took a film course. Honestly, I don’t think it was an accident that I kept taking classes that got to the heart of storytelling.” 

Pulling from her experiences at UK has helped Cook give characters depth. “I can get into the mind of a person who does research because I knew those people and I worked with those people,” she said.  

In addition to winning the 2024 Daytime Emmy, Cook was nominated for a Writers Guild Award in 2024 and a Daytime Emmy in 2023. She credits her success with persistence, taking chances and having a wide breadth of knowledge and experiences from which to write.  

“I always really loved storytelling and I really love science,” she said. “We tell stories to understand ourselves in the world around us and that’s what science does. They’re two different approaches to getting to the same basic human need to understand this world and this life. So I don’t think science and storytelling are all that different.” 

Cook has shifted her focus to writing her own stories. She is writing sitcom pilots and hosted a staged reading of one of her scripts in July. 

“You are going to get a lot of opportunities in life that look different from what you may have imagined and I would encourage college students to keep an open mind to all of the opportunities because even if it’s not exactly what you pictured, it could lead to something just as good or better than what you imagined,” Cook said.  

And following her passion has taken Cook exactly where she wants to be.  

“I encourage people to follow their passion because even if it’s not what you do for a living, it can inform what you do for a living,” she said. “Your own perspectives, your own interests and your own uniqueness makes you an asset.”