Participant: Brittany Stone

Hello, my name is Brittany Kaylie Stone. I am an eleventh grade student at City Charter High School. My school is a charter school and it is business oriented. It provided us with many opportunities to explore what we want to do after high school which is very beneficial. In order for one to graduate from City Charter High school, they must complete an internship. During this upcoming fall, I will have an internship at Allegheny Hospital. This is where I will be able to explore the medical field. In fact, I have intentions of becoming a medical doctor as an adult; specifically I would like to become a pediatrician or a general family practitioner. This school also takes us on a lot of post high school programs including colleges, universities, community colleges, and training programs. This helps us get a better understanding of what kind of education we would like to pursue after high school. They also take up on trips to our Washington D.C., New York City, camping trips, and to Costa Rica so that we can experience things that we typically not be able to.

 I am currently sixteen years old. I like to go on walks and enjoy the scenery of outside.  One of my favorite things to do is travel to new areas. My favorite sport to play is soccer and my favorite color is aquamarine. I am a biracial female with a white mother and a black father of very different ethnicities. Surprisingly, I like to fill out applications, I find it to be kind of fun even though it is very repetitive.  Something that is interesting about me is that I have played soccer since the sixth grade and I have grown to love the sport. The interesting part about that is before my encounter with soccer in the sixth grade, I did not know anything about soccer. 

Also, I love to play with kids; I find them to be a pleasure to be around. I think that it is essential to nurture them since they are our future.  I am going on this trip so that I can learn new things. Personally, I like to travel and meet new people. I find this trip to be a great opportunity to better understand a culture other than my own. While we are in Costa Rica we are going to help build kitchens in local schools. This will help them be able to add lunch to their education program. My one fear is to become xenophobic. Through my years of living in the United States, I have noticed that there are many people who are xenophobic. That being said, it seems as though that his state of mind comes from lack of knowledge. When I go to talk to people about other cultures, they are only able to provide me with stereotypical information. You can’t really blame them; this is typically the way that they were raised. In that thought, I do not want to be one of those people who do not understand other cultures. My largest concern about this trip is to either miss home too much or love it to the point where I do not want to come back. From this trip, I would like to understand how the country of Costa Rica is ran, how the people interact with each other, and if this is a place that I would like to return to sometime in the future. I came to the conclusion if Costa Rica is as great as a place as it seems, I would move there to live.