Who’s Who Among Students is a national award that recognizes students who excel in scholastic achievement. At Oklahoma Christian University, 125 students reached the Who’s Who list. In an upper level journalism class, students interviewed 13 names off of the list.
By Jami Adams
Ellyn Ruth Reid discovered a calling for medical missions after a life-changing experience in Guatemala during the spring break of 2015.
Following her time in Guatemala, Reid spent the summer of 2016 as an intern for a missionary family in Vanuatu where she gave physicals to children in a local elementary school. Reid said she plans to continue her education and become a nurse practitioner after graduating with her BSN degree in nursing.
Reid is actively involved as a member of social service club, Iota Kappa Phi, president of the Philiatros club and vice president of the 2018 nursing class. She serves as the chair of the rules and revisions committee of the Student Government Association and is the senior class president. Reid also volunteers in the Writing Center, assisting students with assignments and essays.
Reid was born March 27, 1995 in Oklahoma City, OK, to Gary and Christine Reid. She was raised in Kingfisher, OK, where she attended St. Peter and Paul Elementary School before transferring to Kingfisher Public Schools in the fourth grade.
Q: What motivates you to be involved at Oklahoma Christian?
A: I joined different things for different reasons. I became involved in Philiatros because I really liked what it stood for. It is a way for students to network with professionals and form their own relationships. I joined Iota because it’s weird and different. SGA, I joined on a whim. I like that you actually have a way to change things about your surroundings and your school by being involved in different things like club and SGA.
Q: What is most important to you in life?
A: Well, some of the things that are important to me now are kind of new. Obviously God is important to me, but I’m less evangelistic now. I feel like helping to alleviate suffering is more what we should be doing in the world than soul winning. I’m passionate about health literacy and promotion. I’m passionate about people in general, that’s why I want to be a nurse. I think it’s really helpful in nursing to be able to treat someone from every walk of life – to treat them like a human being who is important and who has worth.
Q: What do you want to be remembered for?
A: I used to want to ‘make my impact on the world,’ but now I feel like it’s the smaller acts of service that are more important. Something that I don’t want to be remembered for is making someone feel bad about themselves, or inferior. I just want people to feel loved by me, and I know I fail at that a lot, but it’s something that I’m working on and that is very important to me.
Q: What do you consider your best qualities?
A: I think my favorite quality about myself is that I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’ve reached a point where I think I know everything about anything. I’m always going to seek more knowledge, and I’m always going to seek to understand something or someone better.
Q: What has been an impactful experience that has influenced your life significantly?
A: I think that going on mission trips in general have changed me. I had never been out of the country until after my freshman year of college when I went to Zambia for the first time. I think what really changed me from that was just seeing the world and realizing there is more out there than the U.S. Now, I really try to know what’s going on in the world and not just in our tiny bubble.
Q: Tell me about a challenge you’ve had to overcome.
A: Last January, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease after being sick for about eight months. I started being sick right after I got back from Guatemala in 2015, and I just progressively got worse. I would just have horrible abdominal pain that would last anywhere from a few seconds to hours. I’ve been hospitalized twice for it. Being sick all the time was really hard. It was hard to function on the same level. I was also severely anemic, so I was really fatigued all the time. That was really hard to overcome.
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