A big turning point at this time occurred when I had the chance to travel to the Dominican Republic (D.R.) and Haiti on a public health internship in a small town called El Llano (pronounced "ehl yah-no"), near the border with Haiti. While in the D.R., I was able to live in the mountains and hike to Haiti every day, interacting with Haitian fathers, mothers, children, siblings, aunts, uncles and grandparents regarding their health, the health of their children, and just general living conditions. I realized how much I love working directly with people, and especially studying how and why people interact and how they make certain life choices.
I came to fall in love with the how and why of what makes humans so unique and original as animals on this planet. (You might have started studying the reasons behind why humans aren’t just considered to be another animal like a tiger or a gorilla.) This love for the human condition helped me bring music back into my life after dropping out of the school of music. I had found that playing music really helped me connect to others’ emotions, and music gave me a way to process what I felt with all of this work among other people.
Towards the end of my time in my undergraduate career, I was able to visit El Salvador for the first time, and I was shocked with what I learned after spending only five days in the country. I’ll devote a post to this experience, but in keeping things short, this visit to El Salvador taught me the importance of human rights, which are certain guarantees every human has, simply because he or she is a human being.
I spent the rest of my undergraduate career trying to combine the humanities, sciences and human rights into the work I was doing.
