Herb Collins Scholarship

To be 100% honest, I do not have an elaborate and extensive reason why I am choosing the nursing profession. I have always wanted to go into the medical field and I always thought that I was going to be a doctor. It wasn't until I attended the Congress of Future Medical Leaders by the National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists that I realized that maybe I don't want to go to medical school. I started to look at all of my options. I was going through UNC-Chapel Hill's list of undergraduate majors when the nursing degree caught my eye. I started to do some research on the nursing profession and I came across the certified registered nurse anesthetist (CRNA). Another thing that helped me choose to major in nursing is my time as a youth volunteer at UNC Rockingham Health Care. I volunteered the summer going into my junior and senior years. During this time, I have worked in the emergency, nutrition, laboratory, rehab, intensive cardiac care unit, and engineering departments. I mainly spent my time in the emergency department experiencing what emergency nurses do. This is when I decided that I truly wanted to go into the nursing profession. I hope to attend UNC-Chapel Hill and be accepted into UNC-Chapel Hill's nursing school. After nursing school, I have to get at least one year of experience in an intensive care unit before I can apply to a CRNA program. I hope to be able to work as a CRNA in a big hospital that is not too far away from home. Family is important to me so I do want to stay kind of close to them. I love my home town so I want to be able to help build up the area and serve them with my experiences. Even though this is not about my education, I still plan on continuing my volunteering. I have volunteered at this one food pantry with my grandpa for years. I still want to help out my community and this food pantry is one of the ways that I do just that. I do not know all the details of how this works, but that is something that I should learn as I get farther along. I am still in high school so I do not know the intricacies of college and my planned career. I am excited to start college next fall and I am hopeful that my plan will work out. I am open for there to be change as I figure things out.

I can not name a time in my life when I have been bored by a social studies class, and I've always been the most active in any type of social studies class whether it was straight-up history or my current AP Government class. I assume that it is the sheer amount of information regarding my country's and the world's beautiful culture and stories that it has to tell to whoever is so curious enough to research them. There are many wonderful and inspiring tales to discover, whether they be the process leading up to the American Civil War, the famous Battle of Thermopylae, the brutal and dramatic assassination of Caesar, and many more. The way different conflicts, battles, elections, documents, stories, and many more things unfold whenever it comes to the sheer action of man is astounding. Even with my religion, I've always seen the Bible as another historical text from which I can learn the different views of the history of the world. To add, a few years back I also discovered my love for teaching by helping other classmates with their history work. I often found myself ecstatic whenever I assisted classmates in my freshman world history class. I distinctly remember being so happy to work on a historical presentation regarding ancient civilizations in Central America and getting an excuse to help my peers' education regarding these amazing cultures and their history. It was soon after this I began to daydream about running my very own classroom and making up lessons in my head as easy ways for students to learn about all different types of social studies and history. I soon accepted this line of thought as a reality that I very much wanted to be a teacher despite claims from others on "teachers' salary" and how underpaid they are. I realized that I did not care and simply wanted to do what I loved: Helping others learn about the history of the very ground they stood on. Overall, I will use my distinct passion for history to fuel my desire to teach children about social studies. I wish to see a world where future generations are inclined to learn about social studies and are well-versed in all history. I will utilize my love for history and dedication to teaching to ensure the youth in my classes are well-educated regarding the economies, culture, and history of the world and their very own area in the past and present, allowing them to make conclusions about the future based upon past mistakes and events, hopefully making our world a better place for all of those who inhabit it.