Solon students embrace summer learning

Last summer, Solon High School seniors Kamea Duncan and Elijah Lacey attended the National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC) at Northwestern University in Chicago. The program lasted almost 10 days, from July 10 to July 19. NSLC is a program that helps students explore a future career through exciting simulations and interactive meetings with leaders in their chosen field.

Duncan is currently interested in attending medical school and becoming a pediatrician in her near future. She explained the types of simulations offered through the program, such as different Clinical Diagnostic Simulations. From these activities, she learned everything from how to approach a scenario like an actual doctor, to learning how to diagnose a patient and even prescribing medicine.

The  group of medical students also visited Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and met with the Dean of Admissions there, along with several guest speakers.

“I believe this program had a great balance between medicine, leadership and exploration of the city of Chicago,” Duncan said.

Lacey on the other hand took part in a business program at NSLC. He attended lectures led by Quentin Whitehead, an award winning motivational speaker, and partook in team building activities and worked to build leadership skills. Lacey also learned from the CEO of Sales Engine Inc., Craig Wortmann, who created several simulations for the young future business leaders.

Lacey shared that in one of the simulations, his team had to invent a product and pitch it to their mentors. Next they made a commercial on YouTube. He explained how his team invented a watch that used different gestures to control items around a house; the user can control electronics, appliances, and lights with gestures that are abled into the watch and are picked up by little receivers around a house. They called the invention WatchMe.  

“I learned that you don’t need a good or perfect idea to start a business, you just need to work hard,” Lacey said.

Spending 10 days away from home can be a lot to handle for some. But Duncan and Lacey previously attended other summer programs and the two agreed that it wasn’t hard to adjust.

“I’ve been on two one-month-long trips overseas alone, so it wasn’t hard adjusting to different surroundings as these for only 10 days,” Lacey said.

Despite the hands-on activities that both Lacey and Duncan participated in, they  admitted that the most memorable thing about their experience was the people they were surrounded with at NSLC. They went into the program already friends from school and came out with even more friends they met along the way.

“It was great to be surrounded by people with the same interests that I have,” Duncan said. “We would constantly feed off of each other’s ideas until we produced something spectacular, and it is funny how you could meet people from all around the world with all different personality types, yet still have a connection. I still keep in contact with most of the people from my trip. My two closest friends were from Montreal and Nigeria.”

Both Duncan and Lacey appreciate their experiences at NSLC, and have even more of a drive and determination to become the pediatrician and investment banker they always wanted to be.

“The program inspired me and opened my eyes to the endless possibilities in the professional works of health,” Duncan said. “I am still considering pediatrics and the experience was a beneficial [and] realistic preview of what it’s like to go off to college, so I would recommend this experience to anyone.”