Kelsey Cardinal is passionate. As a junior in biomedical sciences and public health, she has worked as a scribe in an emergency room in Montgomery and is currently serving as the national president for Silver Wings, a non-profit student organization that supports the United States Air Force.
Cardinal originally majored in aerospace engineering, although quickly found her interest lie in medicine once she started taking classes.
After shadowing for two years in Baptist Health facilities in Montgomery, Cardinal moved onto a paid scribe position. As a scribe, she was the first person a patient saw in the ER and would ask them questions about their condition and medical history.
"We saw anything from kids breaking their arm to a 911 trauma gunshot wound, so you have to be prepared for anything. You get an adrenaline rush because scribes are in the room when they come in," Cardinal said.
Cardinal said she had to work a minimum of five 10-hour shifts per month, although she often ended up working up to 16 hours at a time. The night shifts were her favorite, because they were more exciting and allowed her to attend class during the day, despite lack of sleep. Still, keeping up with school was difficult.
"The thing that made me really want to do the job because it was so much fun. It was like, 'wow, this is what I want to do, this is my future,'" she said. "You get to Auburn and you take all these classes, and it's just kind of ho-hum. But you go on the weekend and you see all this knowledge being used. It's what motivated me to stay on this med school track. The most important thing for me is to see the other side," Cardinal said.
Despite her passion for her work as a scribe, she had to put the brakes on the job in order to make time for other commitments like her position in Silver Wings.
"It was a lot of fun, but you get to the point where it's 45 minutes away, I was traveling a lot, and traveled even more with Silver Wings, so I had to put the breaks on it to make sure my grades were okay, stay sane with my life," she said.
As the national president of Silver Wings, Cardinal runs the day-to-day operations with her Auburn-based staff. She spends a lot of time coordinating her staff with people all around the country and is constantly in conferences and making phone calls throughout the week.
"For me, it's a fun job, it's something different from everything I do. All this medicine stuff is cool, but when I find something I'm really passionate about, I go for it," she said. "In a sense, I run the entire thing with my staff. I make sure my staff has what they need to carry out their processes. If public affairs need pictures of something, I make sure someone gets those pictures to them. If my secretary needs addresses, I will email the region to get those."
Cardinal is in charge of more than 60 chapters around the country each with 10-20 members, amounting to more than 600 national members.
Cardinal said one of her favorite things about Silver Wings is how different all the chapters across the United States are, but they are still united under one common goal: support air power.
"Each chapter ranges differently. Silver Wings is a professional non-profit organization. Any initiative that might promote education in science in math, that's our mission, to promote that. Auburn's chapter concentrates on promoting ROTC around campus," she said. "But there are some chapters out west that concentrate a lot on volunteering, because that's a big part of our organization too. It's up to a lot of chapters to decide on what they what they want to do."
Despite differences in working in the ER and Silver Wings, Cardinal said the underlying connection between the two is service.
"In the ER, you serve patients regardless of where there from, what they do. I think that overlaps with Silver Wings," Cardinal said. "Yeah, it's completely different, and yeah, they have nothing to do with each other in any other way other than service, but you are still doing something to improve someone else's life, and that will never ever be lost on me."
Aside from serving the members of Silver Wings as president, Cardinal also serves through the organization with volunteer projects. This year, Silver Wings supported the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Education Coalition.
"We went into underprivileged schools and helped teach these subjects. There are five million things you can volunteer with. You walk on every college campus and there's some sort of club," she said. "We went to a school in rural Birmingham and taught these kids with projects. The kids were so excited about it all. I don't think I've ever found myself so drawn to a volunteer project like that."
Cardinal plans to attend medical school when she finishes at Auburn, and has hopes to practice emergency medicine full time when she graduates from medical school.
"There are some days I forget to step back and look at everything," Cardinal said. "That's something that you have to take to do, because otherwise, why are you doing what you're doing? Why would I put myself through this much stress? You have to sacrifice things in order to give back. You are given an opportunity, so you better grab it, and use it in a positive way."
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