Student Excellence Award Essay for RCCC
Rowan-Cabarrus Community College has helped me develop my character and helped me reach my full potential. Growing up, I was what someone considered “smart”. I was only trying to impress my parents at first but soon this led to my own self-sense of achievement. I grew to love learning, reading, and just the idea of school in general. I had high goals and dreams. I wanted to be a pediatrician from a very young age. I love kids and I wanted to make an impact in people’s lives so becoming a pediatrician seemed like the perfect fit for me. I continued to get good grades in school and participate in different kinds of extra-curricular activities and sports. I had never really faced any type of hard challenges …show more content…
I had lost 20 pounds in the matter of a month and half and school just did not seem of interest to me anymore. No matter how much sleep I got I always felt lethargic and weak. On that day, Tuesday, May 29th, 2012, I woke up feeling sick as ever. I stayed home and my mom took me to the local family doctor. He sensed that there was something really wrong when my blood sugar was in the high 600’s, which was extremely dangerous for my health. I was immediately sent to the emergency room where I was diagnosed with type one diabetes. Type one diabetes is an autoimmune disorder where a person’s pancreas stops making a necessary hormone called insulin. My pancreas had completely shut down meaning there was no insulin in my body to break down the carbohydrates I was eating. The sugar from the carbohydrates remained in my bloodstream and just caused my blood sugar to rise. I was shocked, my parents, my brothers, and the rest of my family were completely shocked. None of us even knew what type one diabetes was or what it would entail. I was so afraid of what I didn’t know. I thought maybe I would not be able to achieve my dreams of becoming a pediatrician. All of sudden I was faced with this challenge that