Making wishes come true
When I was on my Freshman Honors Welcome Retreat, one of the student leaders talked about her trip to Florida volunteering with Give Kids the World Village. As soon as I heard this, my interest perked up. Not only did a week in Florida sound like a great way to start summer, but I was once a wish child staying at Give Kids the World Village myself. Eleven years ago, I wished to go to Disney World after I had been diagnosed with cancer, and got to stay at Give Kids the World Village while my family and I visited the different parks. This experience was the perfect opportunity to give back and to see what had changed and what was still the same at the village. While there, the activities I volunteered for ranged from serving food to walking along with horse rides, and from helping in the arcade room to being a pool attendant. I am so glad I was lucky enough to have been able to go on this trip. Not only did it count as another experience towards graduating with Honors, but it also gave me a chance to give back to an organization that helped me when I was a kid going through cancer. On top of all that, I got to experience working with kids with cancer and other life-threatening conditions, something that I hope to do one day as a nurse at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. In the reflective essay sub-page for this section you will find my reflective essay, where I discuss some main points that I learned from this experience. This includes how even something as simple as a smile can help a family forget about their child's medical condition, how crucial this smile is to providing hope to fight a life-threatening condition, and how this experience reaffirmed my choice in a career path to help children going through a similar life-threatening condition that I went through years ago.