Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
You affect your 360. Your words and actions affect the people around you who affect the people around them who affect the people around them. And that’s how you change the world. Not with some grand, superhero-esque moment of sacrifice and bravery. But with small, everyday instances of kindness.
These are the words my father has told me a thousand times and words I’m sure I’ll repeat a thousand times more myself.
The world is a frightening and volatile place right now. Conflicts rage abroad and within communities. Economic projections rise and fall on a single rumor. Politics, education and employment all seem more contentious than ever.
And sometimes it’s easy to feel helpless, lost in a world more confusing today than it was the day before. I’ve fallen victim to that mentality. I’m sure we all have.
So what do I do? What do I do when these feelings, these insecurities, threaten to overwhelm, to paralyze?
I affect my 360.
Health care is my area of expertise, so that’s the area I can speak most eloquently about here.
Before law school, I worked in a hospital during and immediately after the COVID pandemic. I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse. I worked in patient experience and hospital ethics. Whenever there was a complaint or an ethical consultation, I was called not just to help make a decision but to be the one to talk to the patient and family about the choice that had been made. I spoke to patients about end-of-life decision making, why treatments weren’t available to them, why a doctor had acted a certain way or said a certain thing. I also made sure patients had food that met their dietary and religious needs. I helped a patient with difficult homework. I set up a video call with a patient’s boyfriend whom she’d been unable to see for weeks. The problems I solved were as variable as the patients who brought them to my attention. But with each conversation, each act, each person I helped, I was affecting my 360.
These were small moments, yes. But important ones. A pause to help someone process a difficult diagnosis could have made all the difference to that patient. And if it helped them, changed them, then it changed the world, too.
And it’s this exact philosophy that pushed me toward law school in the first place. While I was helping my patients at the hospital, I kept running into the same institutional barriers when it came to getting them what they really needed. I could provide a patient with a lunch for a day, maybe a week, but I knew they’d be hungry again once they left the hospital campus. I could help someone apply for a coupon for a drug and stock them up for a month, but I wouldn’t know whether they’d get the same help or have the same coverage next time. I was affecting my 360 as much as I could, but I wanted to help more, to expand the reach of my circle. I wanted to be able to help shape those institutions and change the barriers that were affecting my patients.
Law school gave me that chance. Every day through my classes, externships, and volunteer work I feel myself getting closer to helping my former patients, not just in the smaller moments but with the larger issues that kept them confined. I see my 360 expanding as I gain and share my knowledge with those who wouldn’t be able to navigate them on their own. From the information I share on health care resources when I’m volunteering with populations in need to the health care policy I research and shape in my legal work, I’m affecting my 360 in the best way I can. The moments are still small, but the impact is just a little wider, just a little brighter.
And that’s how I’m changing the world.•
__________
Jackson is a second-year law student at IU McKinney School of Law.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.