#BearsOfBaylor — “I love being an EMT.”
“This summer, I’m going to be working in Houston on an ambulance. I’m an EMT. I work in North Houston. It’s pretty cool, actually. I get to work with the first aid service team here at Baylor, so I get to do my EMT work through Baylor a little bit. It’s volunteer. It’s not paid. And I go back in the summers and I get to work and get paid.
“Initially, I wanted to go to med school. I’m kind of at the point where I’m questioning it. I’m starting to see what the doctor life is like and everything, and I don’t know if I really fit that mold. I’ve got the GPA for it, I’ve got the extracurriculars. It’s just that I’m looking at it now and I love people. It’s going to be hard to tell my parents that, honestly. They’ve kind of built it up in their mind — ‘My son’s going to be a doctor.’ I have to find a way to break that to them.
“I love being an EMT. You get to work with people and just talk to people, one-on-one, for a long time. Sometimes, you don’t get to talk to them, but it’s more people-oriented than the doctor world is. It’s a lot less stress. You don’t have to worry about insurance claims and all that stuff. It’s just you and the other person, one-on-one, for 15-20 minutes, locked inside a box, so they’re forced to talk to you.
“[Being an EMT] made me more open to people, and the reason why is because so many people when they’re in really bad situations or they’re dying, they don’t talk about the grades that they made in college, or what their major was. They talk about people and people’s stories throughout their life, including college. That’s really showed me that what matters most in college is how you treat people and how you work with people and how you love people, and that’s a step above your grades and GPA, which are obviously important, but that’s the real purpose, and how it’s changed me, because I see people as my purpose, instead of just academics.”
[Every Baylor Bear has a story; #BearsOfBaylor brings those stories to you, one by one. These stories, these people… This is our Baylor.]