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?"

In November 2017, I was hospitalized for the most severe Cystic Fibrosis (CF) exacerbation of my life. During my hospital stay, despite my degree of illness, I vividly remember becoming urgently concerned with how CF would impact my future professional opportunities. My mom sat on my bed, while I was in tears, and I asked her why employers would ever want me, considering "I will have to go to doctor's appointments during the workday, do vests and nebs at work, be sick all the time, and not work during 'flu season' each winter." She told me: any employer with any adeptness in compassion would understand and my reputation of being the hardest worker in the room will proceed me. One piece of my heart believed her, but the other wrote her off as too biased to provide an objective perspective. The collateral implications of CF developed my external locus of control at a young age. Throughout my childhood, I subconsciously perceived life as controlled by treatments, test results, healthcare providers, medication regimens, influenza statistics, and schoolteachers' willingness (or lack thereof) to implement my 504 accommodations. I had no agency in these unpredictable variables, laying foundation for my theoretical lack of perceived control over my life. When my mom told me that my reputation would proceed me in my future workplace, it did not immediately resonate because my core belief was that the world would spin as it pleased, regardless of my attempted impact on it. It did not matter what I did: I would still get sick. It did not matter what I said: continual treatments would still be a necessary evil. Following similar logic, it did not matter how hard I worked: employers would discredit me. However, sitting in the hospital, I felt called to shift my perspective. A fire sparked under me to reclaim agency in my own life, as I craved to display my capacity to always be the hardest worker, best equipped, and most reliable person in the room, regardless of my health condition. CF impacts my lungs - not my ability to be a reliable student, leader, or future attorney. Full adoption of this philosophical shift did not happen overnight, rather, took years to develop. It was not until college that I began to see consequent rewards. In college, CF has not stopped me from running for leadership positions, being inducted into honors societies, or securing my dream internships. To rejoice the full-circle resurrection of perspective, I think back to what the depths of insecurity and instability felt like, sitting in a hospital bed, firmly believing no employer would accept me. In that moment, my wildest dreams could not have fathomed being offered a year-round internship at the United States Attorney's Office only six years later. I have grown to understand that CF is not a platform for which the world can use to deny me opportunities, but an element of my humanity that is accepted and will be creatively overcome, no matter the circumstance.