Anjali Shah is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, double majoring in Neuroscience and Computer Science with a minor in Chemistry, class of 2025. Her goal is to attend medical school and pursue a career in medicine where she can combine her interests in computer science and healthcare. Outside of her studies, she loves traveling and exploring new cultures.
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Anjali came to CareYaya because it fit her schedule and put her close to the work she eventually wants to do. For six to twelve months now, she has been visiting older adults between 75 and 90, helping with exercise, meals, and getting around. She plays games with them. She keeps them company. The visits have a rhythm, and within that rhythm, she pays attention.
With one family she recently joined, she noticed something she had not expected. She and the person she was caring for had things in common, shared threads of culture and religion that surfaced gradually, the way such things do. The older adult had lived long enough to have things worth passing down. Anjali stayed long enough to listen. What she took away from those conversations she still carries.
It shifted something in how she understands her chosen field. Healthcare, she had been taught, is about addressing physical needs. What caregiving showed her is that it is also about something harder to measure, the quality of attention one person gives another, the willingness to hear someone out, the patience to let trust develop at its own pace. Those things matter to a person's wellbeing in ways that do not always show up in a chart.
To anyone thinking about doing this kind of work, she offers this: show up with intention. The person you are caring for does not know you yet, and you do not know them. That unfamiliarity is where the work begins. Bring patience. Bring empathy. Be present. The rest, she says, follows from that.