Olentangy’s Helber plans medical career

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Olen­tangy High School’s Han­nah Helber

Han­nah Hel­ber is excited about her future.

The Olen­tangy High School senior is enthu­si­as­tic about her prospects for the future, excited to be on her own and ready for the “start of the rest of my life.”

Han­nah is con­sid­er­ing med­ical school after her under­grad­u­ate work, which means she is look­ing at least eight to 10 more years of school. She jok­ingly com­mented that it is a good thing she likes school.

Ulti­mately, she hopes to be a nephrol­o­gist spe­cial­iz­ing in kid­ney health and disease.

Her inter­est in the med­ical field stems from her own kid­ney con­di­tion. She has had 20 or so kid­ney stones in her life­time due to a con­di­tion that leaves her unable to absorb cal­cium properly.

Han­nah is apply­ing to Ohio State, John Car­roll, Miami, Kent State and Ohio uni­ver­si­ties in hopes of major­ing in biol­ogy or bio­med­ical sci­ence before going on to med­ical school. Already accepted to Kent State for her under­grad­u­ate work, Han­nah said she would like to go to The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity for med­ical school.

“That would be fan­tas­tic,” she said.

Han­nah vol­un­teered at OSU on a weekly basis in a pro­gram that required her to help trans­port patients from one end of the large com­plex to the other, some­times even retriev­ing bags from a car. She could con­tinue with the pro­gram next sum­mer, or, if a stu­dent at OSU, vol­un­teer year round.

“It’s fun to help even in the small­est way pos­si­ble,” Han­nah said.

Christina Zeller is an Eng­lish teacher at the high school who is famil­iar with Hannah’s strength.

“She has learned not to let kid­ney stones slow her down. Kid­ney stones, surgery, even hav­ing a stent placed in her kid­ney, and then another surgery — she got through each of these chal­lenges, and grew stronger,” Zeller said.

Despite her chal­lenges, Zeller said Han­nah actu­ally feels blessed. “She rec­og­nizes that oth­ers are faced with even more dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances and she helps them,” she said.

In fact, Hannah’s unselfish nature allows her to excel as a vol­un­teer at the hos­pi­tal, she said.

“Her love and under­stand­ing brings warmth and encour­age­ment to oth­ers who truly need it,” Zeller said. “Even before going into surgery Han­nah thought of oth­ers before her­self; she gave a lit­tle boy a bal­loon she had received because he had no vis­i­tors — no one to show him the love and sup­port that Han­nah received from fam­ily and friends. So Han­nah became the love and support.

“Hannah’s courage is some­thing we all can admire,” Zeller con­tin­ued. “She is not afraid to share her dif­fi­cult expe­ri­ences with oth­ers. She wrote about her strug­gle with her kid­neys and bravely read her per­sonal nar­ra­tive to her peers. She is mature beyond her years.”

Besides her vol­un­teer work over the sum­mer, Han­nah has also worked on sum­mer assign­ments for school, com­pleted ser­vice club tasks and worked as a cashier 15 hours a week at a West­er­ville restau­rant. She has con­tin­ued work­ing in the restau­rant now that she is back to school, cut­ting her hours to 10 to keep up with her busy school schedule.

In addi­tion to her aca­d­e­mic work, job and her work with the ser­vice club, Han­nah is also on the school’s swim team and is the team’s cap­tain this year. In her fourth year on the team now, she swims eight hours a week.

In addi­tion to her duties as pres­i­dent of the ser­vice club this year, Han­nah work with peo­ple in the com­mu­nity through the club by coor­di­nat­ing events.

“I’m the go to per­son,” she said.

She also main­tains spread­sheets of mem­bers and their hours and the areas where they vol­un­teer. Cur­rently, there are more than 500 mem­bers in the club.

Han­nah has been a mem­ber of the club since her fresh­man year and an offi­cer since her sopho­more year.

Besides tak­ing advanced place­ment courses in biol­ogy, gov­ern­ment and com­po­si­tion in addi­tion to French V and cal­cu­lus, Han­nah is also involved in French club, recy­cling club and the National Honor Soci­ety at the school.

She par­tic­u­larly enjoys her com­po­si­tion class, she said.

“It’s fun writ­ing,” she said, adding that she enjoys grow­ing as a writer, and improv­ing her craft.

“Han­nah is amaz­ing. I am so proud of her! It is an absolute plea­sure hav­ing her in my Eng­lish class this year,” Zeller said.

Han­nah said she wasn’t always con­fi­dent in math.

“I didn’t think I was good at it,” she said, recall­ing that dur­ing her fresh­man year, teacher Brent Fisher con­vinced her she wasn’t always wrong. “Since then, I have excelled in math,” she said.

“Han­nah is an extremely hard-working, car­ing indi­vid­ual whose enthu­si­asm for her aca­d­e­mic suc­cess is truly con­ta­gious,” Math­e­mat­ics teacher Matthew Jor­dan said.

She is one of our true scholar-athletes — show­ing her com­mit­ment to suc­cess both in the class­room and in ath­letic com­pe­ti­tion. In addi­tion, Han­nah has given back to the com­mu­nity through her lead­er­ship role with the Olen­tangy Ser­vice club. She has suc­cess­fully main­tained a bal­ance of aca­d­e­mic rigor in the class­room, ath­letic dis­tinc­tion and ser­vice to oth­ers through­out the Olen­tangy community.”

Zeller said that “Han­nah is a per­son­able, respon­si­ble, and very bright young woman. She is a straight A stu­dent, our Ser­vice Club Pres­i­dent, and a tal­ented and com­pet­i­tive swim­mer. But she is so much more than that. Hannah’s strong sense of self is what sets her apart from other young men and women her age. She is car­ing and sen­si­tive and pos­sesses con­fi­dence, self-direction and inde­pen­dence. Han­nah is well respected by her peers and Olen­tangy High School’s fac­ulty. Her encour­ag­ing, sup­port­ive per­son­al­ity allows her to illus­trate respon­si­bil­ity and integrity time and time again.

“When I think about stu­dents like Han­nah, I am excited for our future,” Zeller said.

As a senior, Han­nah is look­ing for­ward to all the end of the year senior activities.

“It will be cool to be a part of that,” she said.

She offers the fol­low­ing advice to under­class­men, “Don’t slack off. Def­i­nitely do as much as you can because it will pay off when you apply to colleges.”

Han­nah is the daugh­ter of Dawn and Jim Hel­ber of Lewis Center.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Nov 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.