Meet the 2024 Scholars

"Describe a defining moment in your journey with CF that sparked personal growth or resilience. How did this experience affect you and what did you learn from this moment?"

A defining feature of my growth as a person within the last year would be the manner in which my disease has impacted my education at Mount St. Mary's University. When I first arrived on campus, I was on a radical regimen of medication prescribed by Johns Hopkins for advanced and recurrent NTM. The aggressive treatment included an average of three hours of IV medication a day, two nebulizer treatments a day, and countless oral medications. Ultimately, as I made the three and a half hour drive from Old Bridge, New Jersey to Emmitsburg, Maryland to start my college journey, I was receiving IV doses through my port and moved into my dorm while attached to an IV pole. This routine lasted throughout the entirety of the first semester, which led to many awkward encounters with roommates and friends alike. Whenever people came over, I felt the need to hide the IV pole and change the subject. During Halloween, I tried to convince some friends who came over that it was merely a decoration by hanging a mask and a fake foot off it. My health, as one could assume from the severity of this treatment, was in exceedingly poor condition. With the combination of the treatment, and its side effects, I often found it difficult to attend class but I found the determination to do it. Due to the geography of the campus, I struggled as I literally walked uphill both ways to class. In spite of this, I persevered through fevers, coughing fits, medications, and an extended Thanksgiving hospitalization, achieving a near perfect GPA for my first semester; 3.93. The only class I did not get an A in was German, in which I got an A-. My hard work not only impressed my professors greatly, but also landed me onto the MSMU Dean's List. In addition to taking great efforts in my academics, I am thoroughly involved in extracurricular activities. I am a lector at our campus church, the Immaculate Conception Chapel, as well as a member of the Knights of Columbus. I have maintained leadership roles in the Mount Pep Band, Italian Club, and Republican Club, all while I was holding a part-time job to help pay for school. Due to these factors, as well as my increased academic responsibility in the second semester, it seems that I live in the library and only visit my dorm to sleep. Like geological pressure transforms a lump of coal into a diamond, the academic pressure combined with my poor health has transformed me into a proud, contributing member of the Mount community who is both academically impressive as well as engaged in campus activities. I look forward to continuing my growth at the Mount with the help of AbbVie.