The Crossroads of School and Outside Education by Aimee

The Crossroads of School and Outside Education by Aimee - December 2014 Scholarship Essay

Education can be found in a setting far outside of a school. Although I am working on a B.S. degree in nutrition science, a lot of my education has been from traveling abroad.

Seeing the world, meeting new people, and having an appreciation for other cultures were the most important values taught to my sister and me while growing up. My mother always encouraged us to live modestly throughout the year, so that we could afford trips to new places. She made every trip we went on fun, but also educational. Over the years, I developed a passion for this type of learning. Museums and libraries became my refuge. Combining this with what I learned in school made everything a little clearer to me. Traveling assisted my history studies, sociology, language and literature studies.

The most memorable trip I have ever been on was just a day trip, across the Strait of Gibraltar, from Spain to Morocco. Morocco was the biggest culture shock I had ever been exposed to. We toured a carpet factory, a functioning apothecary, and ate traditional Moroccan cuisine. Everything was bright, beautiful, and different. However, the part that I remember most vividly, was the difference in the economic classes of the Moroccan people. It was like there were two worlds inside that one city; one where people had money, food, and colorful clothing, and another where people had nothing. There was no middle ground. In Morocco, you were either wealthy or starving. I can remember to this day the sight of a sickly mother, sitting on the side of the road trying to feed her newborn baby while she herself had clearly not eaten in quite some time.

As I got into my sophomore year of college, I became more interested in nutrition. My family has a history of weight problems, which led me to change my major to Nutrition Science. Once I began the program, I began to realize pharmacy, nutrition, and my love of traveling all go hand in hand. Nutrition plays a massive role in how or why people get sick in the first place. In class, we learned more and more about hunger and vitamin deficiencies that occur all over the world, causing things like Rickets, Scurvy, or blindness. One of our professors told us about a project she is involved in where she worked to help get women in a small Tanzanian village tested for HIV. I also met a Registered Dietitian and Physician who travel together to Africa together doing their part to help end Kwashiorkor, severe edema caused by protein deficiency.

As a pharmacist and a nutritionist, I won’t ever be able to end world hunger. However, if given the chance, I would love to do my part to help treat the diseases cause by something as simple as lack of a vitamin or a basic macro nutrient. I know how lucky I am to have food and water that is safe, so I don’t have to worry about the treating a very preventable disease. I am lucky to have Vaccines and medical tests readily available. Others are not this lucky. This is where my passion lies, at the crossroads of Pharmacy, Nutrition Science, and helping those in third world countries. My education has assisted my love of people, languages, and healthcare. However it has also shown to me the need for more medical assistance from those of us who can provide it. The person that I am today is somebody who holds high that belief that until everybody has ample food, water, and medicine, our work here is not yet done.