Wednesday, April 13, 2016 // The Statement
6B
O
n paper, LSA sophomore Hannah
Buck looks like every other high-
achieving person enrolled at the
University of Michigan. She double majors in
English and Communications with a concen-
tration in creative writing. She is currently
acting as the Public Relations Chair member
for the Groove Performance Group, a per-
cussion team that entertains audiences with
trashcan drumming and plenty of glow-in-
the-dark paint.
However, the people that she befriends
(and there are many) might be surprised to
learn that Buck has more than just a rigorous
class schedule and Groove performances to
keep up with. Every day, Buck has to focus on
her breathing, something that most people
can take for granted. She is constantly bat-
tling cystic fibrosis, a chronic illness that
attacks the lungs, causing often severe dam-
age over time as well as many other issues
that affect quality and duration of life.
“It’s really hard to get out of bed in the
morning when your body is just fighting
itself,” Buck said. Yet somehow, she manages
to not only get out of bed, but also accomplish
more each day than many people do with a
healthy set of lungs.
Buck’s disease is something that is hard to
comprehend and even more difficult to live
with, so she has dedicated herself to easing
the burden for others by sharing her story.
Her YouTube channel, HannahBreathes,
is where she shares information about how
she’s feeling, what her current health sta-
tus is, and any helpful tips she has for other
people with CF. She also runs a blog for the
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
“I get messages and e-mails on probably a
weekly basis, from mostly students around
the country and around the world either
saying that I’ve helped them or asking for
advice,” Buck said.
Her advice is usually about things like how
to stay organized with the almost 30 differ-
ent medications she has to keep track of.
However, most of the reason she has such a
large audience is that her video chats tend to
spill into general life philosophies and ideas
that she is passionate about.
“I have so many platforms. I feel like that’s
what I am on social media, just a human plat-
form,” she said, ticking them off on her fin-
gers. “You should read books. You shouldn’t
smoke cigarettes. You should be an organ
donor. You should be an advocate for mental
health and you should fight the stigma. Just
be a decent human, really, is my main thing.”
Buck’s life is an open book for the most
part, even when talking about things that
most people try and block out of their minds,
for all the world to see and critique.
“Some things are uncomfortable,” Buck
said. “More uncomfortable for me to share
than my cystic fibrosis or my asthma or
all my physical things was when I started
speaking out about my anxiety and depres-
sion, because that is something that the gen-
eral public is conditioned to believe should be
kept secret. You shouldn’t talk about that, it’s
so embarrassing. And it was embarrassing,
until I started getting those messages about
how other people felt the same way.”
Many people that have cystic fibrosis do
not attend college, and if they do, they take
courses online or at a community college
close to home. Just the fact that Buck is here,
several hours away from home at the Univer-
sity of Michigan, is a huge deal.
“The biggest thing is that it is very hard
and the balance does not come easily,” Buck
said. “The semesters where I physically felt
better, my grades were not as high, because
I spent a lot more time focusing on running
every day and I spent more hours doing treat-
ments. The semesters where my grades were
better, I just felt like crap by the end of the
semester because I neglected everything.”
It’s easy to forget that this vibrant, well-
spoken girl in the neon pink and yellow
sweatshirt also sometimes finds herself lay-
ing in a hospital bed connected to a breathing
tube. It doesn’t happen often, but occasion-
ally her health declines to the point where
she has to go to the hospital for a few days so
that they can monitor her breathing and get
her back on track.
“For the record, cystic fibrosis is the most
curable incurable disease. All we need is
funds,” Buck said. “I’m very looking forward
to new treatments and eventually the cure
for CF. I am very confident in saying that it is
within reach within my lifetime.”
In the meantime, Buck will be focusing on
finding her perfect balance between school
and health, writing, blogging and, of course,
drumming on trashcans.
“
I just love life, I really do,” LSA senior
Ahmad Hider said with a wide smile at
the start of the interview, with energy
and enthusiasm that were present through-
out the entire conversation.
Hider began by listing what he loves
about his life — family, friends, basketball,
food and so on. His list was endless, but he
noted education as his primary focus and
passion during his three years at the Uni-
versity. He said education is the most pow-
erful tool one can have — it provides people
opportunities to succeed, and it stays with
you for life.
“I believe everyone should have all the
opportunities to succeed in their lives,” he
said. “You can strip someone of everything
they have, but you can never strip away
their education.”
For Hider, it was important to maintain
a busy lifestyle to get as much out from his
college education as he could. His main
motivation is his family, whose early strug-
gles motivated Hider to be passionate about
education.
“I’m a first-generation college student,”
Hider said. “I saw the struggles (my parents)
went through. My father started at a gas sta-
tion before he began working at a mechanic
shop and was able to raise a family. My mom
has always been the heart of the home, and
I can never repay them for their sacrifices.”
Currently, Hider works as an undergrad-
uate researcher in Haoxing Xu’s group. Xu,
an associate professor of molecular, cellular
and developmental biology, and his team
study lysosomes, waste disposal systems
in the cell. Without lysosomes, the waste
builds up and ultimately kills the cell.
Hider is involved with a project that
focused on a disease with defective lyso-
some functions — how mutations in a pro-
tein called TRPML1 causes the defects
leading to the disease. The results were
recently published in Nature Cell Biology,
and Hider is one of the co-authors on this
publication.
Hider said he initially put in about 10
hours a week to his experiments, but as he
gained more responsibilities in the lab, he
began to put in close to 30 to 40 hours a
week.
“It got to a point where I went ‘you know
what, I’m just going to sleep in the lab today,’
” Hider said. “The amount of work paid off
because we got a paper published in Nature,
which was a major accomplishment.”
But Hider cares deeply about educa-
tion for other students, too. He has taught
CHEM 125 and 211, which are general
chemistry and organic chemistry lab cours-
es, respectively. Hider said he loves see-
ing the reactions of the students from the
instructor’s perspective — another reason
for him to care about teaching.
“To see the happiness and smiles on peo-
ple’s faces when they learn and understand
something new is amazing,” Hider said.
“That really motivates me to focus on edu-
cation.”
His passion for education does not stop at
the University level. He is constantly keep-
ing himself busy with his ideas — he is plan-
ning to launch a tutoring program for local
elementary school students because “(edu-
cation) starts there.” He envisions the tutor-
ing to provide a more “hands-on” tutoring
experience for the students.
“I just want to better the education for
everyone, not just my own,” Hider said.
As for future plans, Hider said he’s unsure
where his passions will take him exactly,
but he intends to go into the medical field to
help other people because the experiences
will be rewarding. Right now, cardiovas-
cular surgery is on the top of his list, but he
also has other interests.
“I really want to go into cardiovascular
surgery,” Hider said. “But I always wanted
to go into public health too … to focus on
global health problems such as HIV.”
AHMAD HIDER
B Y I R E N E PA R K ,
D A I LY S TA F F
R E P O R T E R
B Y M A G G I E
K O L C O N , D A I LY
S P O R T S W R I T E R
HANNAH BUCK
GRANT HARDY / Daily
ZOEY HOLMSTROM / Daily