{"id":74788,"date":"2019-05-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/commencement-2019-with-courage-and-determination-communications-major-overcomes-brain-injury\/"},"modified":"2019-05-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-01T00:00:00","slug":"commencement-2019-with-courage-and-determination-communications-major-overcomes-brain-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2019\/05\/commencement-2019-with-courage-and-determination-communications-major-overcomes-brain-injury\/","title":{"rendered":"Commencement 2019: With courage and determination, communications major overcomes brain injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 1, 2019 \u2013 Great thinkers have argued whether it\u2019s the brain or the heart that rules the body. Julia DeGiovanni knows the answer. It\u2019s the heart.<\/p>\n<p>When DeGiovanni suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm during her first year at the 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2011, it was her courage, her determination \u2013 her heart \u2013 that brought her back.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Hope Valley, Rhode Island,<\/strong> resident will walk across the stage at commencement May 19 to collect her bachelor of arts degree in communication studies, with a minor in sustainability. DeGiovanni, 26, will be capping a shining career \u2013 dean\u2019s list honors, successful internships, teachers and classmates who remember her fondly \u2013 that once seemed very improbable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGraduation means a lot for any person,\u201d says DeGiovanni. \u201cIt would have meant a lot to me before my accident, but the fact I came back to school, it means so much more. I can&#8217;t even put into words how much it means to me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni remembers the morning of her injury, Dec. 9, 2011, amid final exams just before Christmas break. Rooming with two friends from high school, she awoke in her residence hall with a headache and feeling nauseous. \u201cI got off the top bunk and said, \u2018I don\u2019t feel good,\u2019 and collapsed to the floor,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe next thing I knew it\u2019s a month and a half later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Doctors found that she had a vascular malformation in her brain, or AVM, and had suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm, which is fatal in about 40 percent of cases. During the next five months, she was shuttled between hospitals in Providence and Boston, as doctors operated three times to repair damage to her brain, and performed two other procedures to reattach her skull.<\/p>\n<div class=\"oembed oembed-youtu-be\" style=\"\" data-url=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/Tu5A4GVi-_4\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Julia DeGiovanni - 2019 Graduating Senior\" width=\"1000\" height=\"563\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Tu5A4GVi-_4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>After months in the hospital, she returned home to five days of physical therapy a week at a rehabilitation center in Warwick. She required nine hours of surgery to remove a bone growth in her hip that greatly constricted her movement, and has gone through physical therapy to improve her mobility since the aneurysm. She also had to re-learn to read and went through three years of speech therapy at the 溏心vlog免费B站 Speech and Hearing Centers.<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni still walks with a cane, but her mobility has improved greatly \u2013 and she hopes to walk through commencement without it. She speaks clearly and, while she still reads slower than she\u2019d like, it hasn\u2019t slowed her at 溏心vlog免费B站. And she\u2019s gained a perspective on her injury and its aftermath.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMentally you have to be OK with everything,\u201d she says. \u201cYou have to understand that this is your life, this is what happened to you. You take every day with the expectation that you\u2019re not going to succeed at everything you do, but with the little victories you do win, you\u2019ve got to celebrate them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since returning to 溏心vlog免费B站 in the spring of 2015 \u2013 the same semester in which she would have originally graduated \u2013 she\u2019s had a lot to celebrate. As a test run, DeGiovanni took one class, the fundamentals of journalism with Barbara Meagher, a professor of journalism who has since retired. Despite some early jitters, DeGiovanni finished the class with a 95 average.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was able to do it and I was so proud of myself,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was something I thought I would never be able to do, but deep down I knew I was going to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni continued to build on her success, increasing the number of courses each semester, along with taking classes over summer and winter breaks. This semester, she\u2019s taken her heaviest workload \u2013 18 credits \u2013 and hasn\u2019t received a grade below a 95.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve haven\u2019t taken this many courses since my accident,\u201d she says. \u201cSo, I\u2019m a little overwhelmed, but I\u2019m really proud of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni is also very thankful for those who\u2019ve helped her get to this point.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s her former high school adviser, Tammy Lyons, now a reading specialist at <strong>Charlestown <\/strong>Elementary School, who helped her to read again. There are her parents, Michael Jr. and Kelly DeGiovanni, and her younger sister, Alyzza. And there are 10 \u201camazing\u201d friends who she started college with and who, she says, have always treated her the same. \u201cThey\u2019re my biggest cheerleaders, my biggest advocates,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n<p>Meagher, she says, welcomed her warmly to her first class back at 溏心vlog免费B站. And, Norbert Mundorf, chair and professor of communication studies, and his wife, Joanne Mundorf, senior lecturer in communication studies, have served as de facto academic advisers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI love the ability 溏心vlog免费B站 has offered me,\u201d DeGiovanni says. \u201cMy thing was I needed extra time and I\u2019ve been able to reach out to professors and classmates who I\u2019ve worked with to get a better understanding about assignments or to get more clarification. Communications is my major and it\u2019s a big part of what makes me me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni credits the Mundorfs with helping her center on communications as a major and sustainability as a minor.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJulia really created this wonderfully positive mood in class, and as I\u2019ve come to know her I\u2019ve noticed that she\u2019s that kind of person. She\u2019s open to everything, she\u2019s excited about everything,\u201d says Joanne Mundorf. \u201cAcademically, I think the secret of her success is her enthusiasm and her openness. But she\u2019s also super organized. She\u2019s sort of a renaissance person. She has this vivacious personality, but she\u2019s very methodical and organized.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni has become increasingly interested in environmental issues, and her minor in sustainability has included numerous internships on projects such as 溏心vlog免费B站 Earth Day and a local farmers market.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s just amazing the way she developed an interest in sustainability and pursued it. She\u2019s very persistent,\u201d says Norbert Mundorf, coordinator of the sustainability minor. \u201cIn my classes, I combine a theoretical understanding with a practical dimension. She\u2019s been very good bringing those two things together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeGiovanni is also interning at the Brain Injury Association of Rhode Island. As a communications intern, she\u2019s advocated for awareness at the Statehouse during Brain Injury Awareness Month in March, and served as a greeter during the Statewide Brain Injury Education Conference at the Crown Plaza in Warwick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe has a very valuable perspective on brain injury,\u201d says David Lima, communications manager for the association. \u201cShe is able to relate to others her experience as a brain injury survivor. It\u2019s important for many survivors to know that they are not alone. Her story of personal growth from being incapacitated by her injury to graduation is both moving and important for many who have a brain injury.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Eventually, DeGiovanni would like to work in journalism, perhaps covering sustainability issues as a TV reporter. \u201cFace to face interactions are very powerful,\u201d she says. \u201cPutting a face to an issue makes people take it more seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But for now, she is focused on graduation. She crammed in 18 credits this semester, she says, to make sure she graduated in the decade she started.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI&#8217;m ready for the next chapter of my life,\u201d she says. \u201c溏心vlog免费B站 is a great school. It\u2019s been wonderful to me. I will cherish the memories before my accident when I was here with my friends, and I\u2019ll cherish my memories after my accident when I was doing it by myself. But I&#8217;m ready for the next phase in life. I&#8217;m ready to be considered an alumna.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 1, 2019 \u2013 Great thinkers have argued whether it\u2019s the brain or the heart that rules the body. Julia DeGiovanni knows the answer. It\u2019s the heart. When DeGiovanni suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm during her first year at the 溏心vlog免费B站 in 2011, it was her courage, her determination [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}