This Magic Moment – When Regular People Had That Goosebumps Moment

By Jolene Bell
Staff Writer
thehutchinsoncollegian@gmail.com

Imagine this, you spend most of your childhood crouched on the floor of your room writing song after song dreaming of the day you finally make it. Flash forward after several years of hard work, determination, and grit you step out onto a stage surrounded by thousands of adoring fans who know every word to those little rhymes you wrote. Can you feel the goosebumps?

Unfortunately, only about 1% of people who dream in the clouds actually make it there. So how, as a normal person do you come to feel that same “aha, I’ve made it” moment living day by day in a small Kansas town?

For Kelsey Huskey, an alumna of the Hutchinson Community College’s physical therapy assistant program, that feeling of accomplishment is known. Huskey has been working for Hutchinson Regional Medical Center for a year and a half before that she worked as a personal trainer along with being a Certified Nursing Assistant. During that time she fell in love with watching people progress from needing maximum assistance upon arriving to watching them walk out of the hospital to continue on with their lives.

As a PTA, one of her proudest moments was when a man came in having suffered a massive stroke that left him paralyzed on one side of his body. When Huskey got ahold of him in two weeks time, he was back to brisk walking that even she had to jog to keep up with. She doesn’t just credit herself in that improvement.

Motivation plays a key part in people’s progress. 

“When they are ready to do more than what you want them to do, they have already conquered the most difficult part,” Huskey said.

Huskey’s job is hard work but her own motivation comes from within herself, on days when it would feel better to sleep in there is one question that keeps her coming back to the hospital. “If I were to miss a day, how is that going to affect that person? Will that missed 30 minutes affect how they leave?”

Professor Eric Dudley of HutchCC’s history department is affecting others in a different way. Having taught for around 13 years at both HutchCC and K-State, he has experienced the feeling of accomplishment with many students. When he was deciding on which career path to follow, initially his plan was to teach high school, but then he thought more about it and decided that the connection you can make with students who are taking history courses because they want to in college would be far more rewarding.

“It’s not being forced on them, You can also go into more of the fields that you are interested in,” Dudley said.

He has had several students that have come back to him over the years as history majors because of a class that had taken under him.

“Which is a really rewarding thing to hear,” Dudley said. “It also kind of goes along the same lines when I get a student who enters my class and doesn’t really like history and they tell me that you finally made me enjoy history for the first time.”

Dudley takes a lot of enjoyment in his line of work even though some days aren’t as smooth as others. His motivation to continue teaching comes from the students he has an impact on day in and day out.

“I think my job is amazing because I get to talk about history, something I love and get to hopefully impart at least a little bit of that interest into other students as well,” Dudley said.

Less than 1% of our population are living their wildest dreams out in the open for everyone to see but the rest of us have found those moments of passion in mundane life. From physical therapist’s that work hard to get people safely living life again to professors that take great pride in passing on knowledge. It goes to show that you don’t need to be an extraordinary person to experience extraordinary moments.

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