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Community Corner

Summer Internship Provides Eye-Opening Experience

A two-month internship in Ghana with Unite for Sight helped affirm Buffalo Grove resident Jordan Stone's career goal.

Jordan Stone originally planned to spend this summer on an internship in Washington, D.C., or New York City.

Instead, he found himself more than 5,800 miles from home, providing much-needed eye-care assistance to people in rural villages in Northern Ghana with the non-profit Unite For Sight, which works to prevent blindness.

“I had a difficult year in school, and I was drawn to doing an internship somewhere interesting,” said Stone, who just began his senior year at Duke University. “I want to be a doctor, so I knew if I had this hands-on experience, I could see if I wanted to continue in the field.”

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While he was in Ghana, Stone treated patients. “I would help wash patients’ eyes, and I would remove their bandages after surgeries,” Stone explained. “I was often the first person some of my patients had seen in over three years.”

Stone said he was supervised by doctors and nurses who oversee Unite for Sight volunteers’ work.

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“I learned so much from this experience,” he said. “On a medical level, I learned what it means to be a doctor.”

From one of the doctors working through the non-profit, Stone said that he learned “being a doctor is all about you servicing your patients as well as you can."

“Six hours would pass while I was helping patients, but it would feel like two minutes to me,” Stone said. “It was so amazing and so awesome.”

His experience also helped him learn how to appreciate a different way of life. “I learned how to appreciate how things are in Africa, and the way of life in Ghana,” he said. “Emotions are founded on different things.”

Stone graduated from in 2008. He plans to become an opthamologist, and wants to pursue glaucoma research at the Duke Eye Center. “I’ve wanted to be a doctor since middle school,” said Stone who was inspired by his grandfather, Harry B. Stone, who practiced family medicine.

After learning about United for Sight from a friend, Stone applied for a summer volunteer position. Before he left for Africa, he solicited donations from family and friends, raising about $1,800 over the course of two weeks. The money funded 36 surgeries performed through Unite for Sight.

Stone kept a blog throughout his stay in Ghana. Titled If You Don’t, I’m Ghana, the blog was a way for him to keep in touch with family and friends while detailing his day-to-day routine. His confidence in his work was apparent; in the June 7 blog post, he wrote, “Personally, I am finding the work extremely rewarding and vocationally corroborative — that is to say, I am beginning to see myself as a doctor more and more as I examine patients.”

For people who would like to do an internship in Africa, Stone offers some advice. “People have this view of Africa that it’s pretty undeveloped, and that’s just not true,” he said. “I think parents in general have a misconception about Africa. Just talk to your parents about where you’re going, and let them know that it’s safe.”

“I had to slowly introduce my parents to the idea of going to Africa for an internship. They thought I'd go to D.C. for the summer,” he said with a laugh. “My dad was completely supportive of the idea [of interning in Africa], and my mom went on Facebook and started friending people in her extended network who lived in Ghana.”

“Whenever you feel apprehensive about a trip considered daring, remember that life is about having experiences,” Stone said. He said he would like to return to Africa after he earns his medical degree.

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