Winning Essays: First Year Reading Experience Essay Contest

Congratulations to the six top essay writers in the "Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" First Year Reading Experience essay contest. Though the book inspired many first year Bucknellians to respond, these students' essays stood out as the most creative and thoughtful, and we are delighted to recognize their work:

For their efforts, each of the finalists will receive two books, a congratulatory meal with Dean Susan Lantz, President John Bravman, and Provost Mick Smyer, and a chance to meet the book's author, Rebecca Skloot, when she comes to speak on campus.

  • Phebe Alley

    Essay excerpt: "It is amazing how being left in the dark on something can change you. It eats away your stomach leaving a hollow, queasy feeling, gives you pounding headaches, shakiness, and eventually causes you to distrust everyone, even the people you are closest to. In reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot, I felt a strong connection to Deborah even though our situations are different." (read the full essay)

  • Sydney Isaacs

    Essay excerpt: "People cannot help but feel entitled to payment when they make a contribution to a money-making idea or discovery. The problem is that sometimes, those contributions are too small and easy to warrant a reward. Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks brings up the issue of sharing a profit, as many members of the Lacks family feel deserving of a share in the money made from research done on Henrietta's cancer cells." (read the full essay)

  • Li Li

    Essay excerpt: "I used to think that one of the most troublesome and thorny problems in the real world today is the problem between science and ethics. As the development of technology skyrockets, ethics seems to be unchanged. This growing gap between science and ethics has given rise to various inevitable ethical puzzles." (read the full essay)

  • Amy Patterson

    Essay excerpt: "It is extremely interesting, yet also frightening to analyze this novel from the view point of someone in the medical field today. As an Emergency Medical Technician, it is horrifying to think that all of the issues raised in Rebecca Skloot's novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, are fairly recent and have not completely subsided today. The conditions of hospitals have skyrocketed in many places, but there will always be institutions with more lax rules than others. " (read the full essay)

  • Laura Poss

    Essay excerpt: "Before any mention of the role HeLa cells have played in society or the family from which they stem, Rebecca Skloot begins her story with a quote by Elie Wiesel from The Nazi Doctors and the Nuremberg Code. The quote states how all people should be viewed as valuable, intricate sources of knowledge, and that no human should be regarded in an objective manner." (read the full essay)

  • Megan Ritchie

    Essay excerpt: "It is an old saying that ignorance is bliss. I believe, however, that Rebecca Skloot's novel, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a perfect example of why ignorance is not bliss. To me, the doctors' biggest crime in Henrietta's story was not taking her cells without permission. Should they have done it? Of course not. 60 years ago, however, what they did was not as morally heinous as it would be today.(read the full essay)