Some Viator Students enjoyed their summer break by relaxing on the beach of some tropical island, or by traveling to a foreign country, or by just staying at home and enjoying the Windy City. This summer, I have had the honor of being selected, once again, to attend the National Student Leadership Conference on psychology and neuroscience at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

The National Student Leadership Conference, or NSLC, has been offering pre-college programs at different college locations throughout the United States to academically devoted high school students. Each program focuses on different career fields such as medicine and health care, psychology and neuroscience, biotechnology, forensic science, law and advocacy, business and entrepreneurship, nursing, engineering etc.

I personally attended the medicine and health care program at Northwestern University during the summer of 2015, and the psychology and neuroscience program at Harvard Medical School during the summer of 2016. During the 2015 conference on medicine and health care, the other students and I took part in clinical diagnostics simulations, suturing labs, animal eye and heart dissections, laparoscopic surgery technique labs, as well as CPR/AED training. During the 2016 conference on psychology and neuroscience, we participated in animal brain and eye dissections, labs on insects such as cockroaches and crickets where we tried to stimulate them by either music or by injecting different kinds of liquids in them, labs to examine the five senses, as well as clinical diagnostics simulations.

The NSLC tuition also covers for field trips to important landmarks in the different cities in which NSLC is held. For example, I visited the Bean, Navy Pier, and Michigan Avenue while living in the beautiful Northwestern Campus during the medicine and health care program. During my time in Boston, I visited the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Harvard Square, and the Quincy Market while living in the small and lovely Emmanuel College campus right next to Harvard Medical School.

Though the conferences NSLC offers are very different from one another, they share an emphasis on leadership. At any NSLC program, all students get to attend leadership workshops and lectures which instruct students on how to be better leaders in their field of choice and in life as a whole. NSLC leaders get the opportunity of dancing or walking a runway in the middle of a clapping and cheering crowd at the “Commitment In Action” workshop, the opportunity of discovering their personality style at the “Personality Matrix” session, and the opportunity to speak in front of a big crowd  at the “What I’ve Discovered” session; thus, Students there are able to get out of their comfort zones and let their voices be heard.

Even if ten days may not seem enough, I had the honor of meeting such wonderful and smart people who share my same interests in science and medicine and who have become life-long friends at both the programs I have attended. NSLC gave me some of my best friends and I would not trade them for the world.

In summary NSLC made these two past summers unforgettable for me because it expanded my love and passion for medicine and because I got the opportunity to meet people from all over the country and the world who are just as passionate for health care as me. In my opinion, NSLC is a great program for high school students because it gets them ready for the next chapters in their lives such as college life and a future career.

For more information on the other NSLC programs go on www.nslcleaders.org