This past week I went to cover a dinner where high school seniors were being awarded scholarships. There were the 2 students who were the awesome students who did community service, activities, and were really smart. The there was a category called the ACE award, which stands for Accepting the Challenge of Excellence. This award is for students who have overcome obstacles to still be excellent students. There were 3 nominees. The first 2 received 50 merit awards. One girl had recently lost her father and the other boy had been in a dirt bike accident that nearly took his life. He had part of his skull removed for 4 months to take the pressure off. He also now has trouble with learning and doing things. Everything is more of a challenge now. Obviously these are both very difficult things to not only deal with but deal with and still have awesome GPA's. The girl who actually won the award though stunned me. She was diagnosed with 3 diseases at the age of 8. And she said herself "3 diseases that most people can't pronounce" And that is true of me. I can't even pronounce them or start to spell them to tell you what they are. But in reading her essay she said that she had been to Salt Lake City 27 times in the year for medical care and has had 17 surgeries in her life. She also has a pump the size of a hockey puck in her body that dispenses medicine. When I interviewed her she told me that she wasn't even sure if she was going to be able to make it to the dinner that night because at 5 p.m. it was very ify. I don't know how I would ever deal with something like that. I can't imagine being in that much pain constantly and to be cut open that many times. I would not be the happy person she was or that great of a student. I'd probably use that as an excuse to not do anything. So I was amazed by that and agreed that she should have won the award.
I Do meet a lot of people with my job and this night really made that clear. I'm lucky to not be in the same position as these people but also lucky that I get to meet them and talk to them. I also get to do some cool things. My job paid me to take a ski lesson. Of course my falling in the snow glory was aired on the 5:30 and 10 pm news but that's ok. I've had a lot of people come up and talk to me about it while I'm out in the community so people seem to like it. And it was a fun day of work. If you want to see it here are the links for part 1 and part 1...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzcFazUccS8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTRa_z7-Vi8
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