A class for the select group of student saviors by Amanda

A class for the select group of student saviors by Amanda - February 2022 Scholarship Essay

Here’s a hypothetical for you; You’re walking around in a mall, going in and out of shops with your friends. One of your friends, let's say their name is Diego, has Ischemic Heart disease (a disease where the blood vessels that send blood to your heart become narrow) but he is getting treated for it. You are joking with your friends, looking at items when Diego stops in the middle of the aisle, stares off at nothing, then drops to the ground. He is unconscious and his heart has stopped beating. You and your friends scream for help, begging for anyone to aid Diego but there is no one around who can assist in a safe manner. None of your group knows how to do CPR effectively and the paramedics say they’ll be there soon but it turns out to be too late for Diego.

Very rarely do you hear an emergency situation going on around you. It isn’t often that you hear someone screaming, “Call 911!!” or “Someone please help!” but when most people do hear these traumatic words, many don’t know what to do. You can’t just rely on the hope that a doctor or a policeman will be nearby because sometimes, it’s just you and a stranger and if neither of you know what to do, a situation could prove fatal.

A course that should be considered to be taught in schools should be an Emergency Situations course to teach students what they should do when an emergency happens. It would include mock courses like a building on fire and how to get out, a woman giving birth and she can’t walk, or even a young child having an asthma attack with no inhaler, to teach young adults how to take charge of a situation that may frighten others. It would provide CPR training classes, self defense, and even a study about disarming people who could prove dangerous. It could even teach studies on how to get out of a kidnapping or hostage situation or how to notice the signs of them. Things like being able to de-escalate a situation, calm a very anxious person down, and relax a terrified group of people are skills that aren’t used often, but when they are used, they prove so useful.

Not only would it be a truly interesting course but I would feel more comfortable as a female walking on the street alone at night, knowing that if something were to happen, I would know what to do and how to react. If a person who was obviously much larger than me were to come up to me with a knife, I wouldn’t surrender if I had this course in my history and if it weren’t me who was the one being approached by this individual, I would be able to help a fellow human being in getting out of a dreadful situation.

Life is unpredictable, but being able to be confident in your ability to handle an emergency situation is an admirable trait to have, and it is useful at that. Having this course in your knowledge could mean the difference between life and death for an unfortunate individual or situation.