My service experience this year was super rewarding and helped to remind me why I chose this career path in the first place.  I mostly spent my service time with children because I find it to be the most rewarding kind of service and I want to become a pediatrician one day. The majority of my service hours were spent in Buckeyes for a Cause, Buckeyethon Dance Marathon, and the organization that I am a member of, A Kid Again.  I spent 3 hours volunteering at an A Kid Again game night.  These are super fun events because A Kid Again provides game nights and other fun experiences for terminally ill children and their families to take part in while they are not in a hospital or at doctors’ visits.  This game night took place in October and was Halloween themed.  I helped to wrap the kids up like mummies and helped set up the ring toss game.  I spent the majority of my time, 15 hours, making cards and bracelets for the children in Nationwide Children’s Hospital.  It made me feel happy that one day a young girl or boy who is laying sick in a bed would receive one of my cards or bracelets and hopefully have a better day because of it.

My most memorable service experience this year has to be being part of the Buckeyethon Dance Marathon.  We raised thousands of dollars for children with pediatric cancer who are being treated at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and this meant a lot to me because of my career goal.  Overall, it was an amazing and very moving experience because we actually got to meet the children that we were helping.  Even though I was completely exhausted, and almost delirious after dancing for 12 hours it was completely worth it.  The most moving part of the whole event was when we got to speak to the kids and they got to paint our faces because it just reminds how innocent these kids are and how said it is that have to go through something so intense.

I interviewed my RA, Paul Emenogu Ntia who happens to also be in Health Science Scholars.  He is pursuing a neuroscience major on the Premed track.  While I am a biology major and not neuroscience our journeys will be probably very similar since we are both wanting to become doctors.  Paul said that it is a very tiring journey but, he knows it will all be worth it when he finally becomes a doctor.  He knew that he wanted to become a doctor since he was five years old.  He has recently decided he would like to go into surgery rather than medicine.  Even though he majors in neuroscience, he is not sure if he wants to go into neurosurgery because it so exact and on such a small scale.  Paul prefers to work in the body cavity, so his goal is to become either a general surgeon or cardio thoracic surgeon.

We also talked about how he is preparing for the application process for medical school.  He is currently enrolled in a Kaplan review course to prepare for the MCAT and takes a practice test every weekend.  Paul also said that he is scheduled to take the actual test in June and then start the application for all of the medical schools that he wants to apply to.  His dream school is either University of Chicago or University of Miami in Florida medical schools.  His final remark was that even though it can get stressful just to stick with it because it will all work out in the end.