Service is not just something one does—it is a way of life. My personal philosophy of service stems from my earliest values instilled during my childhood, and was bolstered by my experiences throughout high school and college. Interactions with individuals from vastly different walks of life offered a new perspective on life itself, enabling me to understand the intangible forces at work, how they govern and may inhibit certain opportunities in the future, and how one may intercede to enable another to climb to his or her potential. These aspects of my personal philosophy have remained the primary pillars of my tenets, and they have taken a multitude of forms, evolving from simply acting on puerile intents to help others, to developing a motive
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The present goal, which would have seemed a grandiose claim to my former self, lays within my grasp, but has required successive bouts of personal development and meaningful encounters. Being a member of a living learning community, focused on service and leadership, provided me with my first-hand exposure to the inequalities present in society and education of the roles they play. Though my initial aim was to get the most out of my first-year experience, have the opportunity to explore various service organizations on UNC’s Campus, and find my fit with various modes of service from direct to organizational, the experiences I gained were the start of a transformative process. I must note that as a student majoring in a STEM dominated field of study, my initial experiences with …show more content…
I initially started volunteering in the hospital as an addendum to my coursework—looking for pain points and opportunities for medical device innovation. While finding addressable problems with a substantial market value was akin to finding a needle in a haystack, issues with medical administration screamed out loud from the moment I set foot in the emergency department. Volunteers were staffed to run errands, fill out paperwork, restock medical supplies, and occasionally converse with patients. This however did not help in any way to mitigate greater problems, such as how the lack of mental health facilities caused the psych wards to over flow and take up beds in the rest of the emergency department, or sometimes the doctors had to ignore cries of help from some patients because there were simply too many. A lot of the time, doctors spent filling out paper works for insurance purposes, spending more time typing and clicking than diagnosing and discharging. But what could a student trained to build medical devices do to fight against the tugs of the insurance companies and politicians? While I found climbing the ladders of bureaucracy could be one method to get into a position to serve others and influence change, I could do so by taking the knowledge I gained and building meaningful connections through my own
The present goal, which would have seemed a grandiose claim to my former self, lays within my grasp, but has required successive bouts of personal development and meaningful encounters. Being a member of a living learning community, focused on service and leadership, provided me with my first-hand exposure to the inequalities present in society and education of the roles they play. Though my initial aim was to get the most out of my first-year experience, have the opportunity to explore various service organizations on UNC’s Campus, and find my fit with various modes of service from direct to organizational, the experiences I gained were the start of a transformative process. I must note that as a student majoring in a STEM dominated field of study, my initial experiences with …show more content…
I initially started volunteering in the hospital as an addendum to my coursework—looking for pain points and opportunities for medical device innovation. While finding addressable problems with a substantial market value was akin to finding a needle in a haystack, issues with medical administration screamed out loud from the moment I set foot in the emergency department. Volunteers were staffed to run errands, fill out paperwork, restock medical supplies, and occasionally converse with patients. This however did not help in any way to mitigate greater problems, such as how the lack of mental health facilities caused the psych wards to over flow and take up beds in the rest of the emergency department, or sometimes the doctors had to ignore cries of help from some patients because there were simply too many. A lot of the time, doctors spent filling out paper works for insurance purposes, spending more time typing and clicking than diagnosing and discharging. But what could a student trained to build medical devices do to fight against the tugs of the insurance companies and politicians? While I found climbing the ladders of bureaucracy could be one method to get into a position to serve others and influence change, I could do so by taking the knowledge I gained and building meaningful connections through my own