Fast forward to the end of my freshman year of college, after a hard break-up with an ex who I caught cheating, and the Wellness Center at my school was offering HIV tests for free. I remember being tested for the first time and waiting those looong couple of weeks being so scared of what I would do and who I could tell and…what would my mom think…what if I turned up HIV+.

The whole rollercoaster of emotions I experienced drew me to this topic.

Clearly by everyone’s reaction to getting testing there is a fear surrounding this topic. But it is very relevant and a threat to anyone who does have sex, regardless if it’s one or many partners. My biggest issue was, why did I have to go through this scare to learn about how it’s transmitted and the importance of condoms?!? Granted I wasn’t completely oblivious to condoms and STDs but for the most part I never had a lecture on it growing up—seriously.

So from there I began volunteering with UCF’s Wellness Center and in time became a peer educator/HIV counselor. The next summer I interned for Florida’s Bureau for HIV/AIDS’s Area 7 office and helped with planning community events surrounding this topic, which eventually led to my working for a local comprehensive AIDS organization here in Orlando, the Hope and Help Center. I’m the youth health educator, and still an HIV counselor/tester. I educate the youth in my school district and the local community centers.

Our mission is to save lives by treating and preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS in Central Florida and my personal mission is to find teen girls with that same old mindset (both high-risk and low-risk) and educate, educate, educate; and offer a test too, of course.