About Me

Profile

About: Hey y’all, my name is Samantha Meyer, and I am a lifelong student, an identical twin, Jewish, a perennial houseguest in my best friend’s apartment, a bookworm, and a writer. I push doors that say pull, and I always have to be in the front row for concerts. I love to travel but I am scared to try new foods. I cry at kids movies, I laugh at puns, I stay up talking all night with my friends, and I am a Torchy’s Tacos addict.
I was born in a retirement town in South Florida called Boca Raton. I grew up 3 hours from Disney World, in a brightly colored city, hedged by humid beaches, and 3 o’clock rain. Until I was 14, I went to a small k-12 private school that taught me that a school could be a home and friends could be my family. Before I started high school I moved to Plano, Texas, where I went to one of the largest public high schools in the nation and learned what it was like to start over. I also learned that suburbia wasn’t for me; so when graduation rolled around I packed up all my restlessness and drove toward the Austin skyline, and the university that I hoped would awaken that passion for life and learning that only whispered inside me in high school.
UT has already transformed me in me in ways I could have never imagined. I have a family of friends here who make me a better version of myself every day. I am inspired by them to aim for crazy opportunities, challenged by them to fill my day with meaningful work, and cared for by them whenever my world feels a little too heavy. I am pursuing a degree in Psychology, and I am actively involved with the promotion and initiatives of the University’s Counseling and Mental Health Center. I am also an Executive Chair for the student run philanthropy Texas THON. When I’m not promoting mental health or standing For The Kids of Dell Children’s Medical Center, I love going to concerts and music festivals, exploring the city, eating at any and every restaurant and browsing Petfinder for cats that my apartment complex will not allow.
One of the most fascinating people I’ve ever met was an elderly bus driver in Denali, Alaska. What made this man so interesting was that he had only been a bus driver for a few months. Before that he was an entrepreneur, a cook, the mayor of a small town; he had not just one career, but many. I want my life to have that same variety. I want to revolutionize the way mental health patients receive care, write a novel, publish academic research, start a non-profit organization and, you guessed it, bike to Alaska. I’ve got big dreams and I’m working to achieve them, one mile at a time.

Why I Ride

Until this past summer, I had never known anyone who had lost a parent to cancer. Then on August 10th 2014, I met 88 people who fit that criteria.
For 5 days that summer I was a counsellor at Camp Kesem, a summer camp for kids whose families have been affected by cancer. Every child had a different story- some had lived for years without a parent that had died before they could remember, some arrived still reeling from recent grief. Some were older and had adopted the courageous rhetoric their circumstances had taught them. Some were young and learning for the first time how to talk about the disease responsible for so much fear in their short lives. Some were sweet, some were brats, some cried every day, some only cried when their younger siblings did. What each child’s story had in common was cancer- the terrible force that united them.
I was the counsellor of eight 7-8 year old girls, who were brilliant and rambunctious and messy and creative and loving and strong and quite fond of cookies. I became particularly close with one seven-year-old in my cabin. I immediately gravitated toward her because her Camp nickname was Hermione. The second night at Camp, when I was attempting to untangle her hopelessly knotted hair, I was telling her that my dad had taught me how to comb my long hair without it hurting by brushing the bottom first, She told me that her father had passed away shortly after her younger sister was born. Her disclosure was sudden and surprising- to us both I think- but from then on she rarely left my side. The next night at Camp was the Empowerment Ceremony, when all the campers are able to share their stories about how cancer had affected their families. Before the ceremony, she insisted that she sit next to me, and she explained that she didn’t understand why people would talk about cancer. She thought it was a private thing that people would want to keep to themselves. I told her that she didn’t have to share if she didn’t feel comfortable, she could just listen. And she did. As she heard her peers speak, she started to break down. This was common for the younger kids, many of them felt overwhelmed and asked to go outside for the remainder of the ceremony. By the end of the ceremony, Hermione was the only girl in her age group that was still there. Her head was buried in my lap and she was crying, but every time I asked her if she wanted to go outside she insisted that we stay. Even after the ceremony, when the other kids had shaken the somber mood, she still seemed upset. I asked her if she wanted to talk about how hearing everyone’s stories had made her feel. She told me that she was upset because while the older girls knew many details about how cancer had affected their families, she knew very little about her father who passed away when she was little, or the disease that had killed him. When we returned to Austin on the last day to give the kids back to their families, I talked to her mother about her daughter’s experience at camp. I told her how much I loved getting to know her kid, and how despite her frustrations, she had handled camp with the maturity of someone far older. As I was talking, her mother started to tear up, smiled, pulled me into a hug and said thank you. I will absolutely never forget the look on her face. I knew then that I had made an impact on that child, on her family, and it made every tantrum, ever early morning, every small annoyance so irrelevant. It changed the way I define service.
I ride for Hermione, whose real name I later learned was Delaney, and her mother, and her “first dad who was tall and could juggle.” I ride for all of the children I met during those 5 days who showed me that cancer is not a cinematic tragedy, it is an epidemic of loss. I ride because when they spoke of cancer, they spoke of a battle that despite their family’s loss was far from over. They empower me to ride so that together we can create a world where no child will know that fear.
I ride for my nanny Kristi who triumphed over breast cancer to be there to watch her three kids grow up. I ride for my grandma’s boyfriend, Irwin, who is currently battling lymphoma and who has become a delightful part of my family the past 7 years.
I ride so that every family can go the distance together.