You and the World Blog Post #3: HPV/Cervical Cancer

Posted by Melissa Alvarez in English 1 - Dunn on Tuesday, May 14, 2013 at 10:23 pm

I’m back and it’s May! It’s now time to wrap up the final part of my You and the World project, an Agent Of Change. Since my last blog where I did an interview with my mom and shared her story, I’ve brought it to whole other level. To make my big shabang, I decided to do a presentation on HPV/Cervical Cancer Awareness in front of Science Leadership Academy’s entire 9th grade class. After arrangements were made, on May 1st, 2013 I went to the Franklin Institute and gave a presentation on awareness and then brought up my mother to share her story. At the end we gave out teal and white ribbons that were hand crafted by my mom; the colors that symbolized HPV and cervical cancer awareness.

Getting to where I did wasn’t an easy decision for me at first. The idea of a grade wide presentation was awesome, but actually finding the will to do it was hard. So then I decided that maybe a presentation in front of my advisory would cover it, but I like to be different with what I do so during spring break I emailed Luke Van Meter. Luke handles most relations with the Franklin Institute and SLA, so I asked him if I could go up during April in the Musser Theater to present in front of the 9th grade. After ironing out details I went up on May 1st and presented. Was I nervous? Absolutely. Do I regret my decision?Never. The overall point of this was to get a message across to at least one person, and I ended up with 125 instead.

This project has impacted me greatly. I learned so many new things about HPV, cancer, health issues on both men and women, what was really happening to my mom, etc. I know my project has been heard and that the message was received because if you weren’t listening to me, you definitely heard my mom. I’ve gotten messages and people thanking me for my presentation afterward, but I’m just glad they listened and didn’t fall asleep. What I’ve taken as an experience was public speaking. I feel like it’s helped increase my leadership skills greatly which was something I was very bad at before. I’ve learned that I like to work and think independently as opposed to following someone in a group. It’s all part of my high school development as both a student and a person.

The following video is an edited version of my presentation, but if you want to see the full version I’ll leave a youtube link as well. And that concludes my You and the World project of 2012-2013

CLICK ME FOR FINAL PRESENTATION

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