I’ve been overwhelmed lately with all of my non-academic commitments, like work and organizations I’m involved in, and coming to the point in the semester where my friends are starting to apply and interview for professional schools, and it’s really setting in that a year from now I will be done with my undergraduate education at Creighton. On top of school and getting through this year, all of my friends and I are trying to figure out our lives. Reflecting on the past four years and thinking about where I’ve come from and where I want to go is a difficult process, but it’s brought some clarity to me as I continue the process of discerning what I want to do next year and what I believe.
A little about where I’ve been: I came to Creighton pre-law, because people told me I would make a great lawyer. My love for theatre led me to declare my major as Musical Theatre, still planning to stick with pre-law. Midway through my sophomore year, I realized theatre is something I love, but more as a hobby and that my passion is genetics. Since high school, I have been fascinated by genetic disorders and wanted to become a Genetic Counselor. What little research I did in high school inaccurately made me believe I would have to go to medical school, so I ruled it out. In reality, Genetic Counseling is a two-and-a-half-year long Master’s program, so I changed my major to Biology.
Most of my extracurricular activities, aside from staying involved with in the Theatre Department, have to do with making myself a better applicant for Genetic Counseling programs, most of which suggest some form of crisis experience. I had been looking at avenues for crisis experience for a while when, about a year ago, I came across the YWCA (now WCA, Women’s Center for Advancement) Omaha. After 40 hours of intense training, I am now a volunteer for their domestic violence/sexual assault hotline. It is a very intense experience sitting by my phone six hours/month waiting for someone to call, looking for information or just for someone to listen. It has made me realize how great of a feeling it is to help someone and how little it takes to make someone’s day. I also joined Peer Education at Creighton, through which I became a student member of the Lieben Center for Women Advisory Board, which has been an awesome experience, allowing me to meet many women from around campus and exposing me to issues I have not considered before! It has also given me the opportunity to attend the Wareham Program, which is the women’s leadership program, and the Women’s Summit here on campus. My experiences with the hotline and the Advisory Board have been instrumental in making me realize how passionate I am about women’s issues. As a result, I have taken a couple Women’s and Gender Studies courses to further my education about the issues.
With all the stress going into senior year and figuring out my plans for life, the one thing I have realized is how incredibly grateful I am to have the experiences I have had and meet the people I have met. As a freshman, I was not open-minded enough to move out of my comfort zone and get involved with things like the Lieben Center for Women or do service with the Creighton Center for Service and Justice. Now, as a senior, I am planning on volunteering next year, partly due to influences from a couple professors and partly from the students I have met who are involved in service and social justice. I have made so many great friendships the past couple years, friendships that challenge the way I think, are always there to support me, and are more than just people with whom I can go to Creighton soccer games.
One of those friendships in particular has lasted since freshman year and has grown and blossomed and become so much more than I could have ever imagined from a random roommate placement. She has always been there for me, and the one distinguishing quality of our friendship is that we are able to have serious, in depth conversations about what we truly believe in and what we want to do with our lives to make a difference. No pretenses, nothing fake, we are able to just be ourselves. I feel like that is rare, and I am so blessed to have this friend always there to support me, in spite of our busy schedules.
Kindly,
Elizabeth Boos
Student Box Office Manager
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