A Hero's Journey

What images come to mind as you reflect on your childhood? Playgrounds, blackboards, and soccer balls may be among the warmest of memories. Yet for many mermaids swim their thoughts, princesses get swept of their feet, and lions roar to their loyal place in the animal kingdom. There is no doubt that today’s entertainment has most of its touch using classical influences. Walt Disney has produced animated films that have captured the heart and imagination of audiences of all ages around the world through the magic of storytelling and imagery. Many of us appreciate the imagination and magic that Disney puts into its animations with out knowing they are based off of classical and traditional storylines

The night air was heavy with silence. Clouds drifted across a calm sky, and a full moon shone in the distance. In a small hut on the outskirts of the valley, an old man lay in bed, awake in the peaceful slumber of the village. His breaths came in rattling gasps, his forehead burned, and his joints felt stiff with pain. He shifted on the blankets, his withered hands clenched in fists as he tried to suppress the wave of bitter memories coming to him. His life had been nothing more than work, loss, tragedy. He remembered all of his hope, his ambition, in his youth, and he smiled bitterly. No one would remember him as the man that he had once hoped he would become. Now, as his breathing became heavier and he felt himself fading on the brink of

There I was sitting at the table eating what the nuns like to call food what just looked like to me slop I was sitting with my friend Felix. He came across a carrot and it was a full-size carrot he just sat there and stared at it not even touching it if he did not hurry up and I was going to grab it and eat it.

“Over here!” Lori called to her friend, Kayla as she was trudging below the blazing hot Arizona sun. After looking up and seeing Lori, Kayla shouted “Coming!” while jogging happily to greet her best friend. Both girls were looking forward to this get together because they were planning on hiking a new trail through the beautiful desert mountains. “I am so excited!” Kayla exclaimed once Lori caught up to Kayla. Carrying small filled bags with a couple granola bars, water, a hat, a couple of bandages and some sunscreen, you could see the anticipation in their eyes for this fun adventure! Although they didn’t do much research on this trail, they were thrilled for the trip ahead.

A young man sat outside his home and spoke to himself “The moon is as red as fire and is at it’s highest peak above the castle I can see just about everything from here. My wife was right this is the best cottage in the village. My great-grandfather and his brother built it from scratch. I am so happy to raise a family here.” “Charles come inside tell the kids to come in too it’s late,” his wife said. “Oh honey, look at the moon, it’s more beautiful than all the stars tonight,” Charles said. “Yes yes it is beautiful but tomorrow you have to meet with Sir Elliott. Convince him to let us keep our land even though their has been a drought and no one in the kingdom crops have grown and we have no food to offer him to keep our land,” his wife said

On a cold, breezy fall day Kayla, Connor, and I went for a long tiring hike. The trails seemed never ending and you could not see the top of the hills.

Rion calmed from his night terror easily, and he and Percival went back to sleep. When morning arrived, Rion shot out of bed with a grin, full of his typical energy. He had no memory of his tears and screaming the previous night, which was just as well; the boy deserved peace after all the heartache he had weathered.

At the age of ten, you set a goal for yourself. You decide you want to be a pediatrician you tell yourself I will be all I set out to be no matter the obstacles I will face. Keep in mind you are only 10 years old so you don't fully understand all the struggles you may truly face. Imagine this you started a journey towards your life long dream career. You start your first year of college and realize it may just not be for you after all. The dream you once had may seem to be falling apart. Your grades are slipping and you are falling into a funk. You start to wonder is this even for me? Should I even be doing this? Is this worth my time or my money? Every bad question you could ask yourself starts running through your mind. Perhaps you can do

So much happened during those years, but it all has to start somewhere. After quitting my teaching job, I decided to visit my friend that was dying of uterine cancer(6). When I saw her I was overcome with melancholy. What she said next hurt me even more. She told me that only if I was a doctor I could have saved her. My friend died because she didn’t want a man to examine her, and try to save her. I realized thousands of women felt this way, including my friend; and from then on I was inspired to become a doctor(4). Although I had strong feeling to become a physician it was very difficult to find a college that would accept me. Most colleges thought I was either not fit or too fragile to become a doctor. I applied to about 40 colleges, but not one of them accepted me. Even throughout this difficult time for me, I found ways to still be studying medicine. I studied the human anatomy with many physicians, and that was very helpful, but it still wasn’t enough(1). I was overjoyed when I was finally accepted into a college, specifically Geneva College in New York. But the more I thought about it the more I got nervous(6). What if I was kicked out the first day? What if everyone disrespected me? But I threw away those thoughts and faced my fear of finally attending college. I remember the second I walked into my first lecture on the human anatomy the whole room went silent. I thought for a moment “this is wrong; I shouldn’t be here.” But then I remembered that this is what I want to be in life, so I will stick with it. I simply walked into the lecture and took my seat(1). The rest of the lecture went by in a flash, but was completely silent. I learned later that the reason I made it into Geneva was not exactly what I thought. The students were asked if they wanted me to be accepted, and they all thought it was a joke so they said yes. Little did they know that I actually

My parents are extremely supportive of my dreams and have always told me I could do whatever I wanted as long as I was passionate and devoted to it. Also, being accepted into the medical internship program I participated in my senior year of high school along with my acceptance and scholarship to Gonzaga University are just two examples of some opportunities I’ve been lucky enough to have. Despite my opportunities, I’ve also faced some very difficult challenges in my life that could have stopped me from coming to college or living a normal life. Seddon’s interaction with her family pediatrician reminds me of a less extreme challenge I experienced when the photographer who was updating my comp card and head shots for modeling told me that I was too beautiful to waste my time dreaming of going to medical school and “shouldn’t waste my pretty face”. Just like Seddon, I didn’t let this affect me and instead added it to my list of drives to continue my dream. A more extreme challenge I’ve had to face is living with complex post-traumatic stress disorder and undergoing trauma therapy. Luckily, I’ve had a wonderful support system and this has only further inspired me to follow my

Have ever wondered if the choices we make matter? Did you ever face a time in your life where your heart was conflicted in choosing something that could define the rest of your life? What did you do to get through it? Did you lay down your sword and just let life take you wherever you may go? Or did you do everything humanly possible so that you can achieve your greatest dream in life? There was a girl named Adrianna who wanted to be a medical practitioner more than anything in the world. She was so depressed because her parents can’t afford to send her to college. Adrianna did not know what to do with her life. She did not know what to feel towards her parents. Adrianna did not have clue to what might become of her future. She decided to open up her problems to her friend Annie, hoping that she may be able to help her.

If my Freshman-self saw who I was today, he would definitely be flabbergasted that in five years he would be going directly into the healthcare field. When I first came to Syracuse University, I had the idea of being a biomedical engineer and helping to design the latest in medical devices. Two semesters of engineering, a severe lack of human interaction, and internship later I was on the path to becoming a physical therapist. I thought I was going to fall in love with physical therapy and by now I would be in a graduate program. The funny thing about life is that nothing rarely goes as planned. Due to a computer malfunction, my scores were unable to send to the schools I chose and therefore I was denied. Everything happens for a reason but

I have decided that I want to pursue a career in pharmacy. It is my final decision. I had said these two sentences to my parents on a cold night in December 2016. My parents were stunned. They did not speak at all for about two minutes. I stared into their eyes and could feel my heart racing loudly. I knew that they probably were upset because I did not fulfill their dream, which was to be come a medical doctor. I started to remember all the times that I would tell my parents and sister about the wonderful knowledge I had gained about in biology and chemistry classes in both high school and college. I was determined to increase my knowledge in these classes and was ambitious to keep up my good grades as well. Although, in the past few years, my grades have been dipping. I had transferred from community college to UC Davis and was having a very rough time. It was hard for me to live away from home, since I did not really experience this feeling in my whole life. I started to feel stressed and got quite sick in part of the time that I was in UC Davis. It did take a toll on my grades, but I still was not willing to ruin the rest of my life because of my grades. I wanted to step out of the darkness and come into the light, and try to steer my life into the right direction and become a successful woman in the future. Then, after my reminiscence, my mind suddenly returned back to the present. My mother got up from the couch and came up to me and put her hand on my shoulder. She

It’s hard to imagine what your life will be like, where it’ll take you, or what the future holds for you. If you told 13-year-old me that I was going to be on the path of 8 more years of schooling after high school, working towards a medical degree, I probably would have laughed and repeated the line that I have said so many times: “I’ll never become a doctor...that’s so gross”. At that age, my dream was to become a pastry-chef in a patisserie somewhere in the south of France, living life peacefully. I thought that I could never follow in my parents’ footsteps, sacrificing the best years of my life for the all-consuming difficulty and intensity of the pre-med track. And it is very intense. If you ever come across a pre-med student, they’re likely stumbling over the clutter of their biology textbooks and boundless research papers, frantically searching for the cure for some disease that no one can actually pronounce, all the while cramming for the MCAT that’s in 912 days because they have not yet memorized every bone in the human body. I’d like to dissociate myself from that stereotype. While most aspiring pre-med students were worrying about medical school acceptance rates, I was dreading my dad’s weekly case-study reading that he absolutely had to have my opinion on. Not to mention the countless visits I made to my mother’s work Christmas parties, where the nurses were constantly dressed in their scrubs, and I mean constantly, and the food unmistakably came straight from

I never thought I’d be in a position to become a doctor. There were so many times that I thought it might be better to switch to a different career. These are not sentiments I had a long time ago. In fact, just under two years ago, I thought it may be best for me to change my future plans. But there was something that kept me going. I had a burning desire to keep on fighting, even when others might have thought it was just a pipe dream. You see, I was not one of those kids who played doctor at an early age or switched careers well after college. I really did not know what I wanted to do when I entered college. As an average high school student, I figured I would enter college as a biology major but switch if things got too hard. But those feelings never materialized. I think it came from my competitive spirit and to never settle for less. I never had any true passions until I started playing basketball in middle school. I would practice for hours and hours in front of my house. My mom would have to call me back inside because I liked to play for so long. I was passionate about it. I was devastated whenever I would lose a game or not play up to my potential. I remember playing against my brother and neighbor one time. I lost in a tight game. I was so angry that I punched my mailbox as I heatedly walked home and put a hole in it. I knew that I should never be content with second place, especially for something I was so passionate about. In a few years, I would feel the same