About Me

Profile

About: Hey everyone! My name is Taylor Charron and I am a sophomore at UT Austin where I am majoring in neuroscience. I hope to go to medical school upon graduation. I was born the youngest child in my family with an older sister to look up to and parents who are my biggest supporters.

Growing up, I had a passion for soccer, watersports, and reading. Much is still the same today as I live on a lake now and still read anything that is put in front of me. I’ve read countless stories; some real, some fake, but nonetheless they have all still left a mark on my world.

In my free time, I like to facetime my dog, eat absurd amounts of carbs, and play tennis. I am also obsessed with Kesha and love to learn weird science facts (both really odd but thought I’d still mention it).

I am also involved on campus as a member of Delta Gamma, where I’ve met many of my closest friends. Living in Austin and being a Longhorn has been an amazing experience thus far. I am eager to continue my journey with my Texas 4000 teammates all the way from Austin to Alaska! Let’s make the war on cancer be the death of cancer.

Why I Ride

Cancer touches everyone’s lives in some way or another. Whether it be directly or indirectly, the hole that cancer leaves in individuals and their families is devastating.

I never got to meet my maternal grandfather because of cancer. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in February of 1995. Although the doctors estimated that he had about three to six months to live, he passed away very shortly after being diagnosed. While I didn’t feel what it was like to lose a grandfather, I know what it is like to live with one less. Additionally, I was six years old when my maternal grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer. As a child, I wasn’t able to grasp the severity of her disease, but now I realize how strong my grandmother was - and still is - for overcoming cancer, especially after what happened to my grandfather years before. I am proud to say that my grandmother is a cancer survivor, but I recognize that not everyone can be so fortunate. I want to ride so that those people, like my grandfather, have a greater sense of hope and faith in battling cancer.

I also ride for my grandparents on my dad’s side of the family. My grandfather recently got diagnosed with lung cancer and my grandmother fights emphysema on a daily basis. You could never tell just from looking at her that she struggles to catch her breath because she is one of the proudest women I know. She is the core of our family, loving each and every one of us, and inspires me every day. I ride for them and for knowledge because maybe if they had known the damage that smoking does, their lives would be different.

“We always hope for the easy fix: the one simple change that will erase a problem in a stroke. But few things in life work this way. Instead, success requires making a hundred small steps go right - one after the other, no slipups, no goofs, everyone pitching in.” – Atul Gawande

And that is why I’m embarking on this 18-month journey to Alaska. Because all of these small steps and advances that we are taking against cancer will add up. Because sometimes there isn’t always an easy fix, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a fix at all.

I ride for the people I never got to meet, the people I have met, and the people I hope to meet one day.

May cancer no longer need to be the scariest word in the dictionary.