Beyond120 Pre-Health Scholars Service Group

by Isabella Garganese

During the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis, it was nearly impossible for pre-health students like me to find opportunities to become involved with the community. Hospitals were not allowing students to volunteer or shadow physicians. Most university organizations held meetings through Zoom, and didn’t offer many in-person events or service activities. In the Fall of 2020, while searching for a way to not only connect with other pre-health students but also to serve the community, I discovered the Beyond 120 Pre-Health Scholars Program. Beyond 120 initially sparked my interest as a way to meet other pre-health students and foster my education in the humanities. I later learned, however, that by joining, I would be able to help shape a newly-launched program.

 Beyond 120 Pre-Health Scholars Program enabled me to become not only an ambassador for a growing program, but also a leader of a service group within Beyond 120 that I actually created. While living within the confines of the mandatory lockdown caused by Covid-19 and the correlating feelings of isolation, I came up with the idea of hand-writing letters to residents of assisted living facilities and care homes in the Gainesville area with the hope of spreading some joy to them. Many senior citizens were extremely lonely because they either simply had no visitors, or were prohibited from interacting with or chose not to interact with the wider world out of fear of getting sick. Senior loneliness is a well-documented concern and it has been shown to have an effect on seniors’ mental and physical health. My personal experiences with my own grandparents and stories that I heard from friends inspired me to start a letter-writing campaign to reach out to seniors and hopefully alleviate some of their loneliness. Over the course of the summer in 2021, three other students and I wrote over 200 letters to seniors within the Gainesville community.

I thoroughly enjoyed writing and decorating the letters with the other members of my service group. It was a great way to positively impact the seniors’ lives during a very challenging time. It also gave me the chance to give back to the community in an unconventional way. I believe that sometimes pre-health students focus too much on only volunteering in hospitals or getting involved in solely medical-related areas. Beyond 120 Pre-Health Scholars Program helped me realize that basic humanities are just as important as the sciences when it comes to a career in the medical field. Service groups such as Beyond 120 are an excellent way to explore different interests, meet new people, and develop compassion for others.