The Effect of The El Salvador 2015 Social Justice Experience

I wanted to go on this trip to learn how others deal with their difficulties, to learn about a new culture, to experience something new and lastly to travel to a place I had never been to. Over the course of 8 days, I accomplished each and every one of these. By learning how others dealt with their difficulties I was able to overcome some my own personal difficulties, which did change me. By overcoming these difficulties, I was able to deal with things that have been holding me back. By learning a new culture and its history, I have been able to become more compassionate towards strangers as I now realize that each person has their own set of difficulties that they are battling.
By experiencing everything we did over the 8 days in El Salvador, from the history of the invasion of the Europeans, to the displacement of the people of El Salvador, to the children lost during the War, to the religious leaders assassinated due to their views, to the effects still to this day from the war, to the many students who don’t have a choice of going to University next year, I have become more grateful for all that I have. By traveling to a new place, I was able to learn all that I did and reinforce my love for traveling.

Before I went on this experience my plans for the future revolved around getting into University, getting a bachelor's degree in a science program and then going to medical school. After medical school, I had hoped to specialize in pediatric oncology. After going on this trip, I still want to be a doctor but the type of doctor is uncertain. While I would still love to become a pediatric oncologist, I am also thinking about specializing in something that will cover every aspect of medicine in order to work in areas that need it. My whole goal for medicine is to help people who need it and if going to countries that need it does more of that than that is what I want to do.