Pre-K Biography

While volunteering, I checked in patients, helped organize charts, and worked as a receptionist. This allowed me to serve the underserved population and work with a diverse group of professionals. It was inspiring to volunteer at the clinic because I witnessed esteemed professionals sacrifice their time to volunteer at a free clinic in order to help the community flourish. This inspires me to follow in their footsteps when I become a physician. I volunteered at the community clinic my freshman year; unfortunately, I became extremely busy with course work that I had to stop. However, I have registered to volunteer starting August and I plan to continue working throughout my senior year.

My mom has worked in hospitals since before I was born. From being a nurse to becoming a Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist, she spent a lot of time in hospitals, which meant her family did too. After spending many nights and even holidays at them, hospitals became like a second home to me; and the staff, a family. I learned to love everything about hospitals: the smell, cleanliness, layout, and even the chaos. I saw how controlled yet sincere everything was. I saw and learned things wandering around hospitals that many others will never understand.

As a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins University and a new Research Technician at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, becoming more familiar with different healthcare settings and helping others in doing so have always been of my interest. From my experience of volunteering as a piano teacher for inner-city children in Baltimore, I have learnt that even a small commitment and emotional support can make a big difference in the daily lives and the happiness of those in need. I have briefly familiarized myself to the hospital environment by shadowing physicians and conducting biomedical research but have yet to translate my volunteering experiences and the lessons learnt from them to the healthcare setting. I am a friendly, optimistic,

I later enrolled in a practical nursing program, in pursuit of my dream of becoming a nurse. While taking my prerequisites, I decided to volunteer at a local hospital in the emergency department. At the hospital, I assisted with transporting patients within the facility, preparing rooms for incoming

Were they laughing at me? I did not understand what they were saying. I was not always bilingual. My roots and upbringing were implanted by Ukrainian principals. When my parents came from Ukraine, they did not know the English language; therefore, I was brought up only speaking and understanding Ukrainian. This caused a barrier in the way I interacted with kids my age. I was shy and timid, never leaving my parents side. Upon entering school, I had very limited knowledge of English. Making friends was hard because my accent was heavy and my school lunch smelled funny. I was mortified to go to school everyday. My papers always came back with a bit more red errors and I never did well on spelling quizzes. I lacked the ability to read books as efficiently as the kids in my class. Reading gave me the most trouble: silent vowels did not reach a recognition point, basic comprehension skills were lacking, and my words per minute was always below mediocre. Eventually, I was enrolled in an English Language Development (ELD) program for lagging behind in class. I loathed being the only kid in the class that had to leave. I was taken

I had my moments of success and happiness when I was able to help someone along and see how appreciative they were. There were also times that were saddening and uncomfortable. When visiting rooms, I did encounter people who were losing grip on their mental and physical abilities. I felt a heaviness because even though they were taken care of, there wasn’t that could be done to make them better. It was inspiring seeing nurses and family members continuing to care for them and keep dignity.

In my time volunteering at the hospital, I hope to gain many different experiences. However, there are a few main ones: adaptation through enrichment and dependability. First of all, I want to get to know and adapt to the environment of the hospital and learn how different processes work. This is a crucial part of being in the atmosphere of a clinic. Also, the experiences that I will have at the hospital will help me to understand the routines and entailments of the career I would like to pursue. I hope to become a Physician’s Assistant in the future and this will be the best way to know if it is the right position for me. This enrichment of my understanding will help guide my passion for this career path and hopefully strengthen it.

Since starting, I have step-by-step integrated myself into various aspects of the clinic, although I admit that I still have a lot to learn. I plan on volunteering there long after this internship is over, so hopefully those things will eventually come. Volunteering there has illustrated the joy of healthcare that I have always imagined. Even if the private sector of healthcare is like Maliheh, as a doctor, I will make volunteer work a core tenet of my life. These experiences over my internship have helped contribute to that burning desire.

Through the many trips that my family has taken to the hospital due to various reasons, I have become fond of the hospital and its many wonders. After all the things that the medical field has done for me and my family, I decided to contribute to my local hospital to volunteer and help out those who pay visits to the hospital. Through my exposure to various clinical populations, I want to improve my ability to serve others in this capacity that can guide me towards the medical profession in the future.

Volunteering at Texas Health Presbyterian Plano is my way of giving back to the community while developing critical social skills, and gaining important medical field exposure along the way. It’s an opportunity to change a person’s life, including my own. I volunteered at two hospitals last summer and I’m well acquainted with what volunteering entails and would more than love to do it again. Through this hospital volunteer program, I hope to discover my own passions and talents, while also developing skills that I will utilize throughout my entire high school and college experience.

Questions like, “How are you doing?” and “Where have you been?” I cannot quite remember the specific time, but it was near the beginning of my first grade year at Graham Elementary. This is when I began the speech therapy once again, I had been in the process of the therapy since I was about five years old. What they had me do during the speech therapy sessions, which lasted for an hour to an hour-and-a-half; was to, ultimately, try and speak so others would understand me. They taught me how to say words, phrases, vowels, and other vocal aspects that I lacked in. It was like learning to speak again, it was one of the toughest times of my life so far. Dealing with the feeling of being different from everyone, like an outcast and being picked on for that fact, severely impacted me in those times. In the end, it did not fully teach me to be comprehensive to others. The surgery helped the process immensely. Eventually, I completed the therapy to be comprehensive to all. “Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny…” - C.S.

deliver patients medical records, and run errands for all of the Nursing Units, Radiology, Admitting, and the general offices. From this experience I exhibited characteristics such as responsibility, caring, and, trustworthiness. Most importantly from this experience I learned you can change a person’s entire day by simply sending a smile their way or offering assistance. The small things in life matter, and I was reminded to live everyday to its fullest, because you never

After my first year at UND, I took a CNA class and became employed at a nursing home in Menahga, where I am still working. At this job I was able to experience patient care and begin to see the benefits of helping patients improve their lives. In my time after High School I have also had many other valuable experiences. I have been a Camp Counselor at two, 1 ½ week Confirmation Camps for our church. At these camps it was mine, along with other Counselor’s responsibility to teach the younger teens about how we believe as well as demonstrate how to be respectable adults. These camps allowed me to use and develop my leadership skills and also created memories that I will never forget. I have also shadowed a few different Medical Professionals, in order to better understand the world of medicine. Dr. Dan Smith is a General Surgeon who lives and practices very near to where I live. I was able to shadow Dr. Smith for many hours and built a relationship with him. He showed me some aspects of the medical field that I may not have seen elsewhere. My life has been far from typical, but I do believe that each of my experiences has made me both a better person as well as a be

With being a USF student and the hospital being directly on campus, I think the students of the university should get involved more with the hospital. As they might already, I am unaware because I am not in the health field and I am only a freshman. Possibly for Christmas, the student body could start a toy drive to be able to donate the toys to the sick children. While the hospital visit was a great learning experience, my next service project would most likely be at an animal shelter. My love for the pets and my condolences for the homeless animals’ aids in my decision for future plans.

During my time there, I shadowed a pediatric doctor. While I was asking him questions, he was called into an emergency surgery, and I was unfortunately not old enough to watch according to the hospital restrictions. So as I was waiting around, a PA swooped me up and let me shadow her instead. I was embarrassed to admit to her that I was not aware of a PA’s responsibilities to the hospital. Throughout the rest of the day, I followed the PA into patient rooms and recovery rooms. I was able to observe how the PA interacted with patients with such a reassuring and caring attitude that I had not seen with the previous physician I had met. I not only respected her compassionate personality, but I related to it.