October 22, 2013. I got a phone call from my mom as I was walking towards the dining hall. I picked it up, prepared to brush it off with an "I'll call you later", but something in her voice halted me. "Em, I need to talk with you." At this point in my life, cancer was a dangerous word reserved for Jodi Picoult novels and episodes of House. It wasn't something that happened to real people, especially not people in my life. But by the end of our conversation, it was right at my doorstep. My Aunt Mary was diagnosed with colon cancer. Two months later, my mom's other sister, my aunt Patty, was told she had a tumor in her colon as well. The term "aunt" doesn't nearly begin to scratch the surface of what these women mean to me. We aren't a Thanksgiving-Christmas-Only kind of family, we're the show-up-at-your-door-with-soup-because-you-have-a-runny-nose kind of family. Invasive and loud, but always loving and supportive. My mom's three sisters were more like "mother ad litem" than "aunt". My winter break was composed of hospital visits and hand-holding, and when I went back to school, I was overwhelmed by my helplessness. I wanted to dream up a ten minute fix, a chemotherapy drive-thru, that would make this never-ending nightmare go away. Unfortunately, they weren't teaching that in my Intro to Chemistry class. Sometime around the end of March, I began noticing a bunch of people with their heads shaved. At first I thought it was a fraternity hazing its pledges, but then I saw some girls without hair. Then I thought that, either a lot of students were becoming Buddhist monks or there was some new, weird cult on grounds. I stared at these Buddhist cult members in awe, with a slight twinge of apprehension. When I heard that it was all for St. Baldrick's, however, something clicked. This was it, the solution my Intro Chem class wasn't teaching me. I researched the organization, growing more and more inspired with each story that I read. The only thing that was holding me back was my hair. I even downloaded the "Baldify" app on my phone to see what I would look like. I mean, I cried when I got five inches cut off of it in the eleventh grade, and now I was going to have to shave it all off?! But when I looked at my aunt Mary and her thinning hair, all I saw was a smile. So I'm shaving my head to bring out my smile, celebrating each day that both of my aunts are cancer free. Childhood cancer research is extremely underfunded. So I decided to do something about it by raising money for cures. Now I need your help! Will you make a donation? Every dollar makes a difference for the thousands of infants, children, teens, and young adults fighting childhood cancers.