About Me

Profile

About:

I am a product of my environment. A native Austinite, I have owned too many kites, spent too many Sundays at Barton Springs, spent too much money on breakfast tacos, and have regretted none of it. I have a passion for serving others and for forming joyful relationships that mirror the amazing standard of fun and dedication that the members of my small family of four had with each other. If on the outside looking in, one might say that my family took too many trips to Disneyland, had spoiled and misbehaved canines (well, this much was true), and took Halloween way too seriously. As an insider, however, I had the most incredible upbringing, hallmarked by intense happiness and family bonds that were only strengthened when tragedy struck. My family lost my father to esophageal cancer in 2006, and though I continue to feel the loss every day, I believe that with hope, knowledge and charity, so much good can be accomplished in his memory.
As a senior at the University of Texas, my goals include: getting into a Texas medical school, avoiding undergraduate research, getting back into percussion as a part of UT’s steel pan ensemble, staying active and enjoying health, appreciating the small things, stopping to smell more roses, and taking this magic carpet ride of life with humor, faith, and character.

Why I Ride

Cancer is a term that too many people are familiar with. It connotes loss; the sneaking spread of vice within one’s body and soul. It is what it is, and can be defined without subjectivity. What is cancer’s greatest foe? Hope. Hope is everything that cancer is not. It is contagious, it is kind and it is victorious in ways that cancer can never be. I’d try to define it, but it is impossible. Suffice it to say, that it is like jazz. Jazz. In my favorite short story by David Sedaris, he relates a tale of a squirrel who does not know the meaning of the word "jazz". Skeptical of its meaning, usage and power at first, at the end of the squirrel’s life she “came to think of it as every beautiful thing she had ever failed to appreciate: the taste of warm rain; the smell of a baby; the din of a swollen river, rushing past her tree and onward to infinity.” It is my goal and the goal of the passionate riders of Texas 4000 to spread the hope of many—onward and forward until cancer meets its end.