|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Westminster Christian School senior Leila Barket has a big heart. She wanted to help children, so she volunteered at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and then at Baptist Hospital.
“The reason I ended up doing it because I wanted to get into medicine,” she says. “I met a lot of amazing people and made connections.”
Her freshman year, she worked with staff at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital on meal preparation for the kids. She would bag the individualized meals prepared for the kids. She worked during the summer, so she’d volunteer five hours a day.
She enjoyed her time as a volunteer and wanted to go back after the COVID shutdowns, but COVID restrictions made it impossible.
She moved on to Baptist Hospital her sophomore and junior years, where she helped the nurses by running tests to the proper labs at the hospital.
“I would take the telephone to nurses, occasionally help discharge patients, and bring supplies to different areas” she says.
Her quest for knowledge in the medical field took her to an internship at an OB/GYN practice and as a cardiac electrophysiology intern.
“That doctor worked with pacemakers and monitoring electricity in the heart,” she says.
“It’s a very important practice. He was an awesome person to intern with. I got to see the inside of the hospital.”
The volunteering made her realize that psychology may be more her field.
“Working in the OB/GYN offices, I felt a disconnect,” she says. “I still want to work with people but in a different way.”
At Westminster, she worked on the Warrior Week Committee for student council. This school year she chaired the committee.
“This year I got to be the chair,” she says. “I along with five others planned the entire thing. I was there every week in the summer. I felt connected with everyone.”
She also worked with the faculty on the retreat for 700 people.
As president of the National English Honor Society, Barket spent time with third graders who participated in the Author Academy.
“It’s a club for third grade,” she says. “High school students in the National English Honor Society have a writing workshop with them. We sit for an hour and work with them. It’s been fun to see their development and how they think.”
The teens act as mentors to the aspiring writers.
Barket was in the Advanced Placement Capstone program, and she began a Mentoring program to guide others in Capstone.
“The Capstone program is difficult,” she says. “We are limited on the advice that can be given, but the advice that is given can be very helpful. Some girls wanted to do a project with family dynamics between mother and child. I asked, ‘have you looked into the Meyers-Briggs personality test?’ Giving her the resource is the thing I could do.”
The mentors can also help with grammar, sentence structure and asking questions that can be food for thought.
Barket’s science abilities shone at Westminster. She was in the Honor Science Research Program, and she created a Science Fair project.
She’s an Emerald Scholar, an honors program at Westminster where students are enrolled in specific courses such as Engineering or Capstone for four years.
Next year, Barket will move on to the University of Florida where she’ll major in Family, Youth, and Community Sciences.
In 2020, Barket volunteered at the Night to Shine Event sponsored by the Tim Tebow Foundation. The Westminster students facilitated a prom for kids with disabilities.
Barket would be a photographer and she would dance with the kids who attended.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
