Day by day, week by week, the work increasingly piled up for Hallie Hull, junior. A typical Westminster student gets stressed making up work for a day or two of missed school, but Hallie is no typical student. It all started with a fall that gave her a concussion, keeping her out of school for a month. After attending school off and on, Hallie remained home on a more permanent basis starting late January.

“So the first month I missed was because I passed out in my kitchen, hit the hardwood floor with my head, got a bad concussion, and also had a seizure (I also had pots at the time but I didn’t know that yet because it was fairly mild at the time but it was likely why I passed out). I am currently out because of my pots (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome) symptoms being pretty bad,” said Hull.

With such an overwhelming amount of makeup work, Hallie had to work closely with her teachers and the administration to make up as much missed work as possible. She spent many periods in the counselor’s office at the beginning of second semester, studying for finals from the past December.

“Reading more than about 10 pages of APUSH at a time takes a lot of mental discipline and focus, both of which I did not have because I was still concussed and also phones (and other distractions) exist,” said Hull.

Missing so much school can be exhausting and overwhelming. A little discouraged, Hallie had trouble motivating herself to get her make up work done, so she had to come up with strategies to help herself stay on track.

“It was hard because I didn’t really have specific deadlines like everyone else. It was pretty much just finish this when you can so it was easy to put things off. To combat this, I tried to set my own deadlines for myself to help keep myself motivated,” said Hull.

Even with all her hard work, Hallie’s POTS is keeping her out of school for the rest of the year. She has now started online classes and is planning on being totally caught up before the start of next school year. Hallie’s days can be long and hard, but she is determined to work hard and not fall behind.

“For my online classes, I have my older sister to help keep me on task. She helps me with my school work and lots of other things like watching me and getting things for me to help me stay conscious. Hopefully, I’ll finish my classes by next school year and be able to return to wca as a normal, vertically conscious student,” said Hull.