Charlotte '17 Earns Gold Award
Early last month, Charlotte ’17 presented an independent research project to the community at All School Meeting in Flickinger Auditorium. She gave an informative and comprehensive presentation about Lyme Disease. Charlotte explained how the disease is transferred through ticks, how symptoms affect daily life, prevention techniques, heath care legislation around the disease, and related a moving personal story about a close friend affected by the disease.
Charlotte’s research had significant personal interest, but also served as a component of her Gold Award through the Girl Scouts, an organization of which Charlotte has been a member for 11 years. “[The Gold Award] is 80 hours of community service that I design, run, and manage and must be sustainable past my time involved in the project,” she explains. “I was trying to think of something I was passionate enough about to spend 80 hours on and I’m always telling people about Lyme because people don’t understand that it’s not 2-3 weeks of symptoms.”
In addition to her extensive research, Charlotte generated a pamphlet that was distributed throughout her local community. “The first thing I did was talk to the parks and recreations manager and developed a really strong relationship. She set me up with people who could give me locations to reach out to the community. I developed the signs and set them up.”
When asked what she learned during the process, aside from the obvious facts about Lyme, Charlotte says without hesitation, “I definitely learned a lot about leadership. I learned about communicating with professional people, about advocating for myself and finding people, learning that they need time to respond. It was complicated… people take vacations or have full time jobs so they can’t help right away.”
Charlotte’s project advisor, biology teacher Elysia Burroughs, certainly reinforces this realization, “Charlotte was extremely self-motivated. I helped her practice her speech but aside from that, she worked very independently.”
Thank you, Charlotte, for sharing your research and congratulations on your Gold Award!
