Internship Alum Interviews: Arthur Onwumere

Dec 13

This post is part of a series of interviews with past interns about how Concussion Alliance impacted their lives going forward. This interview follows up with Art Onwumere, who is currently a senior gender and women’s studies major at Carleton College. To learn more, see Arthur Onwumere’s profile. This interview was conducted by Ella Gullickson, a sophomore history major at Carleton College, as part of her December 2023 internship. See Ella’s profile.

Ella Gullickson:

Hello. I am Ella Gullickson. I am here as an intern interviewing Art, who is a past intern at Concussion Alliance. Art, would you like to introduce yourself a little bit?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Yeah. Hi. My name is Art. I use he/him pronouns. I'm a senior Gender and Women’s Studies major at Carleton College. Yeah, and I was an intern in my sophomore year of college.

Ella Gullickson:

Awesome. So I have a few questions for you. When did you start working with Concussion Alliance, and what drew you in?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I worked with Concussion Alliance as an intern in 2020. I'm almost certain I had something to do with program management or it was outreach, so I did a lot of the social media work. Because I knew little about photography and editing, I would make little presentation videos for Instagram and YouTube.

Ella Gullickson:

What were some of the highlights of your Concussion Alliance internship?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I think the biggest highlight was working with some of the student-athletes and having that connected understanding of playing a sport. I think almost all of us who were interns at that time were previous athletes in high school or college and had experienced a concussion of some sort playing a sport. One, it means you're not the only person who was doing this internship for a bigger reason than, "Oh. I want an internship." It was more interpersonal.

Then, another highlight was acknowledging a lot of the effects of concussions that still kind of affect a lot of us after we've gone through the protocols and being able to create a draft protocol for the Carleton Athletic Department with a current student-athlete.

Ella Gullickson:

Wow. Really cool. What sport did you play, if you don't mind my asking?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Yeah. I wrestled all four years of high school. I do boxing now, and that's even worse in terms of concussion risk. Even the little protective helmets, I mean, it's never enough, but that's what I did.

Ella Gullickson:

Wow. Really cool. What was your biggest takeaway from making those intros and outros for the YouTube channel?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I think if anything, my biggest takeaway was just presenting data and these resources in a visual manner is just as helpful as something tangible, like a pamphlet or a handout. It motivated me to continue making videos and different graphic designs for my own Instagram and photography business and do video editing for different organizations on campus.

In general, that was a nice stepping stone to seeing that, "Oh. This is possible when given clear directions and objectives and timelines," and it's something that's still living on. It's been like three years since I was an intern, so I'm really glad I was able to do that. It's something that is still useful now.

Ella Gullickson:

Yeah. It's really powerful to have that lasting impact. How, if at all, did the Concussion Alliance influence your plans for the future?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I think it very much opened a lot of doors for me in terms of internships later on at Carleton. I did an internship with the VA in Portland as a psychologist, like a psychology researcher, and we did a lot of research on patient burnout and public policy when it comes to patient orientation. It continues to fuel my endeavors to pursue medicine. I think it was a nice stepping stone to understanding neurology, and the need for these protocols.

I'm so much more conscious when I play sports, and I'm much more motivated to inform people about taking their concussion protocols seriously, especially when I have friends who are student-athletes at Carleton. They'll talk about having a concussion like it's the coolest thing ever. It's very like, "Oh. I have a concussion. It's no biggie," and I'm like, "Please. If I could go back to high school, I wish I took my protocols seriously." So I think there are a lot of social, interpersonal, and advocacy aspects of the impact of that internship.

Ella Gullickson:

Yeah. Wow. That's cool about your other internship. That sounds fascinating. How did the internship help you more broadly?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I think broadly, it helped me, understand how to work in groups. Also, it helped me figure out what I was interested in. I was a freshman, so I had no idea what I was going to major in, and just wanting to do cognitive science classes and taking at least the intro class motivated me to want to explore that avenue. I didn't end up pursuing psychology as a major, but I still feel like it is something that I have as a toolkit. I can talk about if I need to talk about it.

Ella Gullickson:

Yeah. For sure. I think those roads that seem to have ended when trying out careers are really important. Because you know what you don't necessarily want to do, but you still have those skills to back it up.

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Yeah.

Ella Gullickson:

Did what you learned about concussions through the internship impact your relationship with others?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Oh. Yeah. A hundred percent. I think it was something I talked to Mikki Showers about. When I was working at the Rec, it was something we were trying to create, an actual concussion protocol draft that aligned with Division I institutions, such as the U of M and the University of Wisconsin, like Madison, just trying to make something that was practical and realistic so that even after students follow the known protocols, how to do follow-ups, how to do more, I guess, neurological scanning of players, how to evaluate whether or not a player's actually ready to play again, possibly talking about a student should be suspended for a certain amount of games, even once they've cleared, once they've gotten clearance. So, talking to her, I felt very supported in that endeavor of creating a draft. I no longer work for the Rec, but it was, for my sophomore, entire sophomore year, something that we were working on trying to produce and trying to get approved.

Ella Gullickson:

That's really important work, especially with the risk factors in second impact or continuing playing right after a concussion. That's really important, and I just have one last question. Have you ever experienced a concussion?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Yeah. I want to say three. One of them was really serious that, honestly, I didn't know what I was going through. I was a senior in high school, and I refused medical care. There were paramedics on standby at this tournament, and I had gotten, essentially, thrown onto the side of my head. The mats every tournament we ever had, we would jump on the mats purposely just to feel how soft or stiff they were, and this was a very stiff mat. So there wasn't much recoil. It was just straight into the mat.

I remember my coach saying, "You went in and out. We started asking the basic questions, like your name, date of birth, and the name of your parents. You were speaking, but you weren't opening your mouth." Once I was able to talk, I was like, "I don't want to go to the hospital. I don't need any attention." So they ended up calling my dad, and he had to drive and take me to the hospital. It was just like a lot of things going on as a senior in high school, and I think in my head, I knew I had a concussion. I did scans, and they were like, "You have a concussion." The only question on my mind was, "When will I be able to wrestle?" Because I wanted to go and compete in regionals and state, and I didn't want that to be a hindrance.

Honestly, I rushed it. There are a lot of things that, since that concussion, it's something that still affects me now. It's like I'm much older, and I'm aware of it. So it's like if I see it at other tournaments when I come back home to Houston and I go to wrestling tournaments. I'm just kind of like, "Somebody should go and check on that kid," or, "Hey. Actually, let's stop the match." There are a lot of things like that. So even in boxing, it's something I'm very ... I prioritize my head. Even when I wear the little padded helmet, I will take a hit before I take a hit to my head. So I prioritize every other part of my body getting hit when I'm boxing before I take a headshot or something. So yeah.

Ella Gullickson:

Do you think that your new perspective when it comes to concussion is due, at least in part, to your experience with Concussion Alliance?

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

A hundred percent. The conversations I have with my friends who are athletes, the way that I'm mindful now that I do boxing, that internship really gave me an eye-opener. I was working to provide this information and also learning at the same time. I didn't come in there as an expert. I just came as somebody who had a concussion, who has experienced that, who played sports, and who didn't have a strong protocol back in high school. I still follow Instagram, so it's stuff like that, where I was just as much getting educated as I was being somebody informing others.

Ella Gullickson:

Oh. I'm so glad that you've continued informing others. I think that's important. I also had a concussion in high school, and I've also had too many concussions just in general, and-

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

What do you play?

Ella Gullickson:

I used to play soccer. That's all you need to say really, I think.

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

I already know. Yeah. Wrestling's weird. We have headgear, but it's not to protect your head. It's to protect your ears. So even if you get hit on the mat or slammed, I mean, your whole neck and spine, all of that is being jolted at God knows how fast, and then somebody else's body weight. So yeah.

Ella Gullickson:

Yeah. All those G forces, for sure. My head kept getting snapped back from getting soccer balls or inertial injuries didn’t seem like too big a deal, but I'm not realizing until now with this internship how much I did not take it seriously.

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

In high school, it wasn't even like a ... The protocol was two weeks of no screen time, no active mat, no active wrestling. You could do warmups, and I was just like, "Why would I even bother trying to concentrate on something like a warmup?" So yeah. A lot of stuff in high school, I think it's high school, so you don't really think about that stuff.

Ella Gullickson:

You're invincible until you're not, and then when you're not, you don't know how to seek help. That's why I think Concussion Alliance is important.

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

Yeah. I wish they would come to Carleton and do a pop-up, I don't know, not like a pop-up shop, but like a pop-up resource fair or something with the athletes, because ... Or even us who do IM. You can play Intramural football, flag football. That's dangerous still. There's rugby teams. There's a lot of sports that are chartered sports, but they're not like NCAA sports. But they're still dangerous. Rugby is dangerous. I don't play, but I've always wanted to. But I see them at practice. I get scared.

Ella Gullickson:

Oh my gosh. I work as an EMT for the rugby games. They legally need an EMT there because someone always gets seriously injured. I'm like, "Oh my God," but I guess it's enjoyable and fun. So that's hard to manage, like, "I don't want to get injured, but this is fun. This is what I enjoy doing."

Arthur (Art) Onwumere:

It was just like wrestling. The idea is that you would go into a match, and the goal is to win and not get injured, but even though ... I've seen people dislocate their shoulder, make it to finals, and pop the shoulder in, and go back into a match. It just didn't matter to a lot of us. Like I said, concussion, I was like, "When can I wrestle again?" Because the state was in March, and I didn't want to be hindered by that because my head just hit the mat hard. You know? So yeah.