A career in lifesaving is not just noble; it’s heartbreaking, frustrating, miraculous, terrifying…sacred.  It’s quite possibly humanity’s noblest endeavor, for which I greatly and gratefully sacrificed my health and heart in pursuit. Emergency care and education keep the blood pumping and my eyes and mind open. I’m turned on when pitted against calamity’s chaos. I come back for more.

Lister, Hunter, Hypocrites, DeVinci, and Kinsey—the luminaries of thought didn’t muddle in the trenches of community college. However, if they had, I believe they would have observed a similar twinkle of light and curiosity in the fresh faces filling those seats, each a beacon of hope for the future. Would they feel the same obligation to concoct the proper tincture of knowledge, patience, and compassion to enchant and entice students toward purpose in lifesaving? Undoubtedly, we share a kinship forged in the fires of discovery and possibility.

  I see this profession as grotesquely poetic. Emergencies Management is Humanity’s proving ground; in crises, knowledge is challenged, theories tested, and strength is tempered, or it topples. Under a gun or over a cliff, we find out what rules deepest within us. When it’s time to run toward the fire, what will we do? Despite visions of catastrophe rushing through your mind, will you devise a haphazard assault plan, pray for God for luck and reinforcements, and go to work, or will you flee? 911 work is equal parts Colosseum, Killing Floor, and Cathedral. Here, I work, play, pray, and sometimes perform miracles.

Can we teach Honor? Is it inspired or honed? How do I get the best from students? What do they need, and how do I teach it to them? That is what this portfolio will investigate.

Emergency care only survives through exemplary people willingly pitting themselves against civilized calamities. It is a bitter, dangerous job, but the bitterness makes the joy more memorable. The memory of an 80-year-old wife embracing her bone-thin husband being carried to chemotherapy sticks with us, along with the shootings and stabbings.

Emergency Care integrates age-old knowledge with cutting-edge technology. This portfolio exemplifies my belief that integrating nuanced tradition with cutting-edge methodologies and technologies produces the best outcome. Will this be the key to keeping the classes full and the students surging to the front line

After sustaining career-ending injuries, I have to take a backseat to lifesaving. That doesn’t mean that my hands are tied. I can teach others to heal. I’ll give it everything I have.

Forward in life, this is my wish for my students and their patients: If you cry, it is from joy; if your heart breaks, it breaks cleanly and heals stronger.  If you pound your chest, it is to resuscitate, and when you touch others, may your hands be gentle and lain on to heal. 

*Lady Windermere’s Lover, Act III*Lady Windermere’s Lover, Act III