Character is not attained through ease of circumstances but through one’s response to the vicissitudes of life that at one minute you ride high on eagles’ wings while at the next moment you plummet and see yourself falling, falling, and dashed upon the rocky shore below. I have ridden the vicissitudes of life already and am emerging as a relentless, competitive, and yet caring person who compels others to come and fly as high as me.
Two years ago my twenty-one-year-old brother died in a hiking accident in the Alps near his military base in Aviano, Italy. Moving forward without him seemed impossible, but time passed and the deep lacerations in my heart scarred over. Toughened instead of weakened by self-pity, I rejoiced in the idea that he was climbing mountains when he died. In pondering my own response to his death, I realized I was a person who never gives up.
I see my relentless spirit as I keep at my schoolwork until I am satisfied I’ve done my best job. This past week, I had not only a difficult soccer schedule but also an enormous test in my AP US History class. I felt the need to put in extra hours studying in order to be certain I’d do well. I read over my own copious notes, took online quizzes, made my own terms list, read extra material, and also enlisted two classmates for a study/quizzing session. When I got my test back at the end of the week, I had the top score in my class! My study buddies did well too and I know they benefitted from the competition I set up. Spurred on by the discovery that I can motivate others to fly higher in life, I have undertaken little people-projects in my school. So, today, there’s a French-class student, Brian, who is making note cards for the first time; a sophomore, Shelby, who brings her homework to study halls and actually does it; and special-needs students who have a better feeling about themselves because they know I think they’re cool.
I thought I’d reach the heights of success playing the beautiful game of soccer, but shortly after my brother’s death, my dream began to plummet. A soccer-related concussion led to the second worst day of my life when I was told I had Acute Traumatic Brain Injury and should never play any competitive sport again. While that diagnosis was reversed, a sternum injury and then multiple ankle sprains, ending in surgery followed. For almost two years I went to physical therapy several times a week and lost the entire first semester of my sophomore year. Worst, however, was when I was cut from my club team that is now ranked within the top ten teams in the nation. I no longer feel certain I will play collegiate soccer which saddens me greatly, but injuries as well as an epiphysiodesis and an emergency appendectomy brought me inside the medical community, especially at UPMC Sports on the southside of Pittsburgh. Instead of being a burden to me though, these experiences have brought me into friendships with many people working in health care who have willingly shared their journeys into medicine with me and given me a vision and a certainty about where I believe my future lies.
After I had the repair of my ATFL on my right ankle, my mom asked my surgeon essentially the same question we’d asked our concussion specialist, who’d replied that my life as an athlete was over. My ankle surgeon, however, had a better answer. He told my mom he could always fix my ankle. From these two different answers, I now know both extremes of emotions: the devastation of “the end of sports” and the exhilaration of “You go for it!” I understand the heart of an athlete; I want to be a doctor who can stand down the athlete’s enemy and return him to the field of battle. I look at the Governor’s School for Health Care as the beginning of my specialized education and an opportunity to make a difference for some young athletes in my community now through my proposed project.
