WHEN IT was time to find a college, Sydney Kahan knew exactly what she wanted. She wanted to move out of the cold north and away from home. She also wanted to keep playing soccer, study to become a nurse, and continue to travel. She found all of those opportunities at Wesley College.

Kahan and her family are Reform Jews. When Kahan was a junior in high school, she participated in March of the Living, a trip to Poland and Israel for Jewish teens. She spent two weeks away from home without a cell phone or a laptop. This was her first time out of the country. During the week in Poland, Kahan joined 11,000 Jewish youths from all over the world as they marched in silence from Auschwitz to Birkenau on Yon Hashoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day. This was the same route Jews were forced to march to the gas chambers, the route known as the March of Death. She and the other teens then toured the concentration camp at Birkenau.

Visiting such an important piece of Jewish history was not easy for Kahan.“Poland was the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I had trouble sleeping some nights.” Israel, on the other hand, was a completely different experience. The youth who participated in March of the Living spent a week in Israel where they celebrated Israel’s Independence Day, Yom Ha’atzmaut. “On this day, you pretty much party in the streets of Israel. It’s crazy,” she said. The crowd in the streets was a mixture of Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews, all coming together to celebrate and sing songs they all knew.

After the celebration, Kahan marched from the old city of Jerusalem to the Wailing Wall. She felt a strong connection with her religion while she was there. “My whole Jewish identity I feel like I’ve gotten in touch with, especially in Israel.” She hopes to return again one day, possibly in a study abroad program. Kahan chose Wesley College because it fit her search for a school south of her hometown, Cranston, Rhode Island, that had a competitive Division III women’s soccer team and a strong nursing program. She found all of that at Wesley, and after spending a night with “the soccer girls,” Kahan knew
Wesley was the place for her. She already loves the school after
spending the first half of the fall semester taking a full class load and playing goal keeper on the Wolverines women’s soccer team. “So far,” she said, “soccer has been amazing. It is a huge reason why I like the school so much. It gets you involved so quickly.” Juggling sports and academics is not easy, though, especially since the nursing program is intense, so her goal is to maintain the balance between the two while she is at Wesley. Kahan is considering moving on to a master’s in nursing after she graduates and hopes to be a pediatric oncology nurse. Her best friend was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of 11 and Kahan has been interested in helping sick children ever since her first exposure to that world. When she was a sophomore in high school, she attended the National Youth Leadership Forum (NYLF) on Medicine, a ten day experience for high school students who want to explore medical professions. She stayed on Emory University’s campus in Georgia and attended lectures by top doctors and surgeons. She also toured a hospital, watched a birth, and even helped skin a cadaver. She learned about possible options in the field of medicine and made some good friends in the process.

Kahan was fortunate to have taken part in the NYLF trip as well as March of the Living, both eye-opening experiences for a teenager.
As the trip to Georgia was also her first extended time away from home, it helped solidify her later decision to move away for college. Now completely content in her pursuits at Wesley, she hasn’t regretted her decision one bit and she looksforward to the many opportunities still to come in her college career.