Rebecca

Note: This is a bragging post. If you don't want to read something syrupy you might want to skip it...but on the other hand...

Last week was interesting for Rebecca. She was planning to volunteer at a local hospital but ran into a snag. She's not old enough. They do have a summer program for high school students that they would put her in but she couldn't be a regular volunteer.

This is not the first time she's run into problems. Being young has some disadvantages... As a freshman in high school (but only 12) she wanted to take a Sign Language class at the community college. The instructor met with us and thought it would work but then the administration turned her down. Still, things work out in ways we don't expect. The administrators at Grand Canyon University learned about her and invited her to take classes through them. They offered the first year ASL and when it came time to take the next level, transcripts in hand, the community college could hardly refuse her (although they did make us go through hoops and sign all kinds of waivers.)

But back to my story. As Christians we tend to believe that Providence plays a role in everything that happens. Still, a discouraged Rebecca was resigning herself to being a junior volunteer at the hospital. Then she decided to look further at the Sun Health Research website and discovered that several of the scientists involved in their Alzheimer's program were also professors at ASU. One in particular, was at the West campus. She was able to email him, explain her interest in volunteering, and give some references from his department. After meeting, he invited her to work on his team. He is in the Psychology department with a couple of different focuses on age related diseases. Friday she got to go in and meet many of his other helpers (who are mostly grad students). No doubt this will be a far better opportunity than sitting at a reception desk.

Last week was also finals at ASU. Biology was first and Rebecca was glad to get it out of the way. The Chemistry class was later in the week giving her more study time. What I call "the front row kids" gathered after the Bio test planning to go over Chem material for a couple hours. Almost ten hours later Rebecca came home exhausted--they had gone through the whole semester's worth of information. It sounded pretty grueling to me but apparently paid off when she reported that a lot of that earlier material did show up on the exam. After sitting on pins and needles for two days she could wait no longer and emailed the professor about her grade. The end result is that she now has 55 credits and still all A's.

So what's next? Rebecca has wanted to be a doctor since she was five. Each semester she sashays through makes me think it's more likely. And...for what it's worth she just can't wait until she turns 18.

Oh, and in case you are wondering the top picture is what a temper tantrum looks like...and the bottom picture is a young girl determined to be Superman for Halloween, not Superwoman, but Superman like her big brother.