My Junior year of high
school had just begun and on the first day my english teacher gave an
assignment. It was simple: what do you aspire to become? As much as I wanted to
put "I don't know" on a sheet of paper and call it a day, I knew i
couldn't do that. I had an interest in health care that's all I knew. Long
story short, it took me a few hours of searching online to realize that
choosing a career was not a one day mission. I stopped for a while to watch
T.V. and luckily for me, the first channel I flipped to was TLC: The Learning
Channel. The next 30 minutes proved to be a domino that would start a cascade
that I would have never imagined.
The show that was on
was Untold Stories of the ER. There were roughly 30 minutes left in
the program and a biker had been in a terrible wreck: he had a tree branch that
had penetrated his helmet and become lodged in his neck. It seemed like an
impossible case. He was bleeding profusely and the trauma care surgeon was
having trouble removing the helmet without causing fatal damage to his neck.
Long story short again, that trauma surgeon saved his life. Easily the most
adrenaline filled 30 minutes of my life. That half an hour turned to an hour,
to an hour and half, and finally to two hours. I was mesmerized by these health
professionals who were working together to save lives by the minutes. They were
making a real difference, they were the real heroes. I didn't know if I was
going to hit the trauma care department or the ER necessarily--just watching
them for 2 hours was intense--but I knew for sure that I wanted to become a
physician.
After finishing that
assignment I had to begin directing myself towards the pre-med track. At my
high school was a chapter of an organization called HOSA. It was a pipeline for
future health professionals: a national organization that served to prepare its
members for a career in healthcare. Well that fit the bill for me. It was time
to sign up. Just my luck; I had no leadership experience and chapter officer
positions were available. I had the crazy idea that I should run. I decided to
run for Vice-President. I would find out a month later, that I was the new V.P.
of our chapter. Another domino to fall in the cascade.
After serving for a year
in as the V.P. of our chapter I gained a true appreciation for HOSA and its
mission. I had attended the State Leadership Conference--most fun and enriching
3 days of my junior year of high school--and come across some of the most
passionate, driven, fun, kind, and motivated students till date. HOSA was more
than competitive events, it was working to not only create better future health
professionals it was working to create better people: Those who were leaders,
compassionate and driven. There was definitely much more to come, and many more
dominoes to fall. Stay tuned!
