This I Believe

Larissa Sese-Khalid: “Role Models”

Role Models

by Larissa Sese-Khalid

 

I met one of my first role models in a hospital. This experience happened when my sister cut open her knee and had to go to the hospital to get it treated. Occasionally, I believe that my sister can be a clumsy person. The time my sister injured her knee was the time we used to watch a television show called WWE. She liked to imitate the wrestlers by jumping off the couch and onto pillows. One night, my sister had forgotten that she sat her glass cup on the floor near the blankets and pillows.

Unfortunately, in the dimly lit room, the glass cup was hidden. When she jumped off the couch, she landed on the glass cup, injuring her knee. The glass cup left a large cut on the side of her knee and blood was flowing out quickly. That night, both our parents had to go to the hospital to get her injury treated and I got to make the decision to go with them. She was in a lot of pain, but after the doctor and nurses in urgent care treated her, she felt significantly better. Fortunately, when the nurse checked her injury, there weren’t any glass shards in her wound and her cut just needed stitches.

They started treating her cut by cleaning her injury and injecting her with anesthesia before stitching her knee up. They had to do a two layer stitching process where they had to add dissolvable stitches inside of the cut before stitching it closed, since the cut was so deep. The process of how they treated her made me become interested in the medical field as I got the opportunity to watch them treat her knee. From my ten year old perspective, I saw the doctors and nurses who treated her knee as heroes because they made my sister feel better and healed her injury. From the doctor’s actions of helping my sister, it made me feel determined to be able to do the same in the future. These heroes are my role models because they inspire me to help people like they helped my sister.

I believe that having good role models are important in my life because they set admirable examples for me to follow. They help me develop good traits and habits for myself as well. More importantly, they give me advice, courage to overcome barriers, and help me improve myself. My belief in working hard started from my parents. Throughout my life they worked hard to support me and my two siblings. Additionally, they worked to provide me with an education and opportunities to achieve success.

Despite coming home late everyday after working many hours, my parents would always give me opportunities to ask them for any help I would need. My parents are supportive as they make it possible for me and my siblings to have the opportunity to be whatever we want in life. An important lesson they taught me was to keep moving forward despite facing failures or experiencing difficult times in life. One difficult time in life for me was during the pandemic. The beginning of the pandemic changed a lot in my life because it happened so suddenly. The pandemic negatively impacted my mental health as my senior year, senior graduation, and other events I was looking forward to were cancelled. Despite that, my parents encouraged me to keep moving forward in my education and supported me through my depression. My parents also encouraged me to keep moving forward through my failures.

When I didn’t pass my AP test, my parents were there to motivate me not to give up. I then was able to reflect and look over my mistakes so I could do better on the next AP test. I strive to be like them because they are strong and inspirational. I believe that it is important for me to have admirable role models in life because they keep me inspired to move forward.

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(Read all the pieces in This I Believe; featured image by Tafadzwa Tarumbwa and used under CC0 license)

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