Being a first-gen college student has been challenging, yet a journey. Financial burdens have been a huge obstacle for my family. My father who migrated from Thailand made it to the U.S. for a better future. Although he was in search of a better place, he faced financial hardships trying to keep up with the demands of the U.S. economy over time. Each semester I am burdened with financial stress, worrying about how every new semester increases my student loans. The thought of my father struggling with rent and bills puts weight on me to graduate as soon as I can. He works 2 jobs, with barely any rest, to contribute to our family. The pressure was on to graduate as soon as possible to relieve the stress of my father. When I applied to nursing school for the first time, I got rejected, leaving me despaired, especially overthinking that I did all of this for nothing and considered dropping out of college. When I shared the news about dropping out of college to financially help the family already with my father, he refused to let me give up my education for his sake. He encouraged me to pursue my passion and told me that everything is fine and doesn’t need my financial help. He reminded me that his sacrifices were a support to my future. I am now determined to graduate as soon as I can so that my father can finally rest. The pressure to succeed in school is now on, but it fuels my ambition. My goal is to enter the healthcare field as soon as possible, making a meaningful impact to my future patients. Other than the financial aspects, my passion for nursing is quite more meaningful, wanting to have the medical skills and compassion at the same time for my future clients or patients. I am fully committed to my studies in nursing school, pursuing an associate degree in nursing. My passion, determination, and my fathers motivation will carry me through the challenges of nursing school. This scholarship would overcome financial obstacles, allowing me to focus most on my education. Earning this scholarship would not only help me pursue my career, but would also be a testament to my father’s sacrifices and believing in my potential. I’m proud of how far I’ve come, facing unfortunate obstacles throughout my pursuit of becoming a nurse. I’m determined to make an impact in the healthcare field while honoring my father’s dedication and hard work.

Throughout my years in primary and secondary school, I developed an appreciation of team collaboration. Working towards a specific goal to help others always felt rewarding by building trust, respect, and a sense of accomplishment. Although it felt an honor to be a team collaborator during my earlier school years, I did not know where to apply these skills outside of school and into a career. That changed during a physical examination in high school. In the clinic where I was getting my physical examinations done, I appreciated the many healthcare workers that I’ve interacted with, especially the nurse who was mostly on the frontline with my care. The nurse handled my care with remarkable medical skills and compassion, making me feel at ease. Her professionalism provided me with trust and reassurance. At that moment, I realized that the kind of work I wanted to pursue is one where I could combine medical skills and compassion to make a meaningful impact on a patient’s life, And also an environment where team collaboration can be effective to improve the patient’s outcome, by sharing information and supporting each other, leading to a higher and safer patient quality care. As I continued on my education into college as a pre-nursing major, my passion for nursing in pediatrics deepened. While volunteering at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, Utah, I had the opportunity to tutor young patients who’re unable to attend school due to their medical circumstances. My role was to assist them with assignments given by their teachers, making sure that they stay engaged and understand what they are learning. This experience was rewarding, as I built rapport with the children and earned their trust during difficult times in their lives. The lifespan of a human in their childhood years is a crucial period for cognitive, motor, and physical development. Unfortunately, not many children are able to experience such things to grow these developments due to their hospitalizations. But I believe that pediatric nurses are a huge factor to not only providing medical treatment, but also supporting a child’s overall well-being. Pediatric nurses help close the gap of hospitalization and a child’s normal development, making sure that the young patient does not feel left behind in life. If I was a pediatric nurse, I aspire to provide my best medical treatment with compassion, to ensure that my future patients feel valued and comforted, just like the nurse who reassured me with her expertise and kindness. Receiving this scholarship would allow me to focus on my education rather than its financial obstacles. If I’m fortunate enough to receive this scholarship, I will honor the generosity by passing on my medical knowledge and compassion to my future pediatric patients, ensuring that they receive the comfort and care they deserve.

I am a student who is passionate about my nursing career, but there are a few factors that are challenging me. I’m currently facing financial and personal obstacles that are making it difficult to continue my dream as a nurse. However, I am committed to overcome these obstacles to make a difference in my life and my family. My passion for nursing is rooted in my desire to help others, but to also help my own family. Growing up, I have witnessed the sacrifices my father has made to support our family. At the age of 60 he’s working two jobs to support us, often working long hours to provide financial stability. Seeing him struggle to make ends meet has been a driving force for me to finish college with even more urgency. For a time, I considered dropping out of college because I had empathy about the financial burdens my father faces. I felt responsible for supporting him, and I believed that if I step away from school I would be a contribution. But my father, understanding how important my dream was, told me that it was okay to continue my education and he wanted me to follow through with my nursing career. His support motivated me to stay in school and strengthened my commitment to finish my nursing degree as fast as possible. The pressure was on and it has driven me to take my education more seriously. I’ve made it my goal to graduate and become a nurse as fast as possible. I’ve managed my time carefully to balance my classes and work. I sought out volunteer opportunities to gain some early experience in the healthcare field and give me a higher profile to reach out to nursing school applications. This scholarship would ease the financial burdens that have made it difficult for me to focus on my studies. With the help of this scholarship, it would provide me more hours of dedication to complete my education. I could focus on studying, developing nursing skills rather than worrying about paying for textbooks, tuition, and other school supplies. I want to devote myself to be the best nurse I can be, and this scholarship will give me the opportunity of doing that. If I am fortunate enough to receive this scholarship, I will honor the generosity by passing it on in the future. It is my hope that I can be a source of inspiration to others who may be facing the same obstacle as me.

Vinland Saga is an anime that I would watch over again. The anime takes place in England during the medieval times. Our main character Thorfinn was a positive and energetic child until he witnessed his father being killed by a high ranked soldier named Askeladd. With rage filled up with him, Thorfinn decided that avenging his father would do him some good. But the process of trial and error was overwhelming trying to kill Askeladd. Thorfinn has been Askeladd’s slave for years and was used to fight along with Askeladd without any rewards. There are so many factors that block thorfinn’s revenge. It was his isolation with askeladd’s group who bullied him and didn’t provide food, shelter, comfort, and respect. But Thorfinn didn't give up because his flashbacks of his fathers death reminded him why he was doing this. After successfully killing Askeladd, he developed conflicting emotions towards the casualty of his past and present life. Thorfinn now realized that communities shouldn’t be formed by violence but by peace. His new goal now was to create a village where there would be peace far away from warzones. But again with his pursuit of goals, there are always factors blocking it. Years later into his adulthood, he was a slave who couldn’t leave where he currently was until he paid the debt by farming. But he continued his goal no matter what. Thorfinn is the reason why I would watch this anime again. His strong ambition towards his goals while stuck in unfortunate circumstances is very captivating and motivates me to continue my education. My goal was to complete nursing school and become a registered nurse. I was pursuing the traditional 4 year plan but must attend more than 4 years due to my GPA from my prerequisites not reaching the minimum amount to get into nursing school. The minimum requirement was a 3.0, but I had a 2.95. I asked my advisor if they would allow me in still but it’s not acceptable. This got me really upset and made me reconsider being a nurse and dropout because I thought I was too dumb to become a nurse and I needed to repay my loans. I imagined my life if I wasn’t a nurse and I couldn't really see myself living happy when I couldn’t work in my dream career. I decided to retake some of my prerequisite courses to bring up my 2.95 GPA and it changed to 3.2. Like Thorfinn, I had the ambition and self discipline to continue my goals even though there are so many blockades that made me reconsider to continue. I recently applied to nursing school and am currently taking a gap semester because nursing school for me starts in the fall. I would complain that my life is not normal and compare myself to friends who are in nursing school already, but I wonder, if Thorfinn was in any tough situation, he would push through it and he went through a tougher time than me so why should I give up on what I’m pursuing.

As a student who is pursuing nursing, I’ve participated in some volunteer activities that are related to the healthcare field so I could understand the concepts of workflow and its environment. I volunteered as a tutor for Primary Children’s Health in Salt Lake City, Utah. it’s a pediatrics hospital where the patient’s are young and some are in school but unable to attend due to their medical circumstances. That’s where my role comes in to start or continue their education while in bedside care. Typically starting my day off, I meet up with the teachers on the 3rd floor of the hospital called the “School Zone”. There are 3 teachers and each of them tutor on different floors of the hospital. I help tutor with one teacher on the oncology floor. Once I enter the School Zone, I greet my teacher and we discuss who we are tutoring for the day. After that, we grab some school supplies such as pencils, papers, and a calculator. Some patients are given homework from their school that needs to be completed. Me and the teachers' responsibility is to ensure that these patients understand what they’re learning and will be provided information on how to do their assignments. A great example would be math. Lots of students struggle with math but it’s one of my best subjects to teach. I try to provide as much help as possible, but must be aware of hinting or giving any answers to them because it’s their responsibility to learn and develop these skills in the future. Helping patients out on their homework is a big benefit to me and to them because I want to ensure that they're on track with school since they’re medical conditions are preventing them from attending classes in person. Although it’s my duty to tutor patients on their homeworks, it’s also my understanding that I should be aware of how tense I should tutor some patients because they’re limited to a certain extent due to their medical conditions. For example, I tutored slowly but surely to patients who’ve gone through recent chemotherapy because I do not want to stress them out when the side effects of the drug treatment are blocking them from learning. When it comes to tutoring patients who are not old enough to be students or have any conditions blocking them from school work, I bring some game activities from the School Zone that help improve their motor and cognitive skills such as puzzles, writing games, or online games that involve drawing and creativity. Playing such games like this with younger patients or are unable to learn at an academic grade level is very important to them because improving one's cognitive and motor skills is a part of life which helps them improve their human developments. Patient care is important especially to patients who are young and still in school. Kids are still developing their cognitive and motor skills during their prime years of learning so it's really important for them to branch out and explore new things. Unfortunately, some are unable to experience life due to their conditions where they have to reside in a hospital. But I’m glad that I participated in tutoring or playing with these patients to make sure they’re not behind in life.

As a child who was born by parents almost middle aged, I was inspired to become a nurse due to my family’s health related problems as they age. Being the only young child living with parents with a family history of cardiovascular diseases, I want to provide them care if any circumstances happen. Many of my family members from my fathers side, specifically male, experience cardiovascular disease such as heart attacks or strokes. What I suspect is because maybe we inherit some sort of trait that causes heart diseases for males. I want to educate and help my family members to be aware of any factors that can cause any sort of heart disease and inform them of some interventions such as exercising. And I especially want to help my dad the most because I’m the closest to him. Even when I was a younger kid, my dad has high blood pressure to this day and I worry that one day a heart disease will catch up to him. My main goal is to get as much experience in bedside caring if anything ever happens to him or any other family members that are in need of medical help. During my volunteer service in the surgery waiting room, I was influenced to become an Operating Room Nurse. Becoming a nurse in the operating room personally sounds more engaging compared to any other specialty. It requires good communication skills between other healthcare providers and I think that kind of opportunity will help me grow with communicating skills in the future. Operations are like a group project, and I’ll be a good colleague to face any upcoming challenges. A hardship I had to overcome was providing care for my father while working and studying during college. My dad had an injury all over his right upper limb when he was trying to pull on the mower’s cord but used an excessive amount of force. He was in such pain that it was hard for him to do simple tasks like sleeping, showering, and carrying things like groceries out of my moms car. In a span of a week without wanting treatment, I noticed that he’s depressed because of his inability to do simple tasks and his injury was still hurting him. I’ve never seen my dad this vulnerable and it made me upset because I considered him the strongest one in our family. We discussed if we should head to the doctors and get it checked up but he argued that he will get better as the days go by. This upcoming experience of taking care of my dad tested how responsible I could be because I also had homework, studying, and work. I knew I was going to be stressed out, but I made this possible by sacrificing some of my free time such as exercising and hanging out with friends so I could focus mainly on my family and future career. During those days, I provided him tylenol and an IcyHot pain relief cream to improve his recovery. Every 4 hours or times that I’m able to see him, I ask if he’s taken his tylenol and I would rub the pain relief cream on the aching parts of his arm. I realized that this experience was overwhelming. However, this taught me how to deal with burdening situations, but also maintain composure at the same time and I hope this skill will carry with me to the healthcare field. I committed to helping my dad and my future career at the same time and took responsibility for those roles.

Angel Khampha Bold 11/23/2022 Your Dream Music Scholarship A song that has the most important message to me is a song called “Ease” by Whirr. It’s a rock song where the instrumentals are at a calm rhythm and the guitars are a bit distorted which I personally liked about the song. But what was most important to me about the song was the lyrics. The lead singer sings about hiding his feelings. The burden of hiding his emotions tends to build up in him mentally, but he does not want to express his true feelings to people around him and he states that it’s okay. The part where he says,” These feelings are all I know, Hidden in ways that I can't show, the burden feels okay, I'm used to the weight, all alone,” clearly represents my emotions. I’m introverted and I don’t like to talk about my feelings a lot. Everytime when someone or something is bothering I tend to ignore it, yet that stress of being bothered will build up within me and I will feel irritated. But overall, I can’t express my true emotions due to the fear of negative outcomes if I do express them. Overall, this song has helped me a lot because it’s relatable and makes me feel at “ease”.

The first week of Fall 2022 semester, I tried to put myself to sleep to get ready for the next day. When I was trying to sleep, I was overthinking so many things that went inside my head. It was my 3rd year in college and I wondered if I still wanted to pursue my career in nursing. I was overwhelmed by the fact that I’ve been in school for 3 years and I still haven’t got into the nursing program yet. Calculating my circumstances in school, I would need to take 3 more years of school to graduate. I told myself that 3 more years is too much for me and the best thing to do at that moment was to drop out of school because it was too overwhelming. I have no money so I also thought that dropping out and getting a full-time job right away would be the best decision. I was also overthinking that studying in college blocked my social life. Because I was too busy studying and focused on my work life rather than my social life, I never felt so lonely. Scrolling through social media I get to see everyone having the time of their lives while I’m in bed trying to rest from studying or work. It made me feel isolated due to the fact that I felt left out from all the fun activities my friends were doing. What was most heartbreaking to me was when my dad announced to me that he got a 2nd job for us to become financially stable. He starts working at 2pm-10:30pm on his first job and starts his other job at 11pm-3am. This was heartbreaking to me because my dad is getting old and in the future, he would probably be unable to financially help our family. This was another factor for me to drop out and find a full time job. With all of this going on in my head, I had a mental breakdown. It was my first mental breakdown too. I tried to put myself to sleep but it was impossible because I was overthinking all of these things and I had so much stress in me. I tried to take deep breaths, tried to distract myself, but all I could think about was these negative things. It was hard to get all of these things out of my head and it was getting to the point where I had suicidal thoughts so I could get rid of all this overwhelmed thinking. Fortunately, I spoke up about it to friends who are also mentally struggling. They said that they feel my pain and we both opened about how bad depression and suicide can be. After opening up to ourselves, I believed we have a stronger bond. I feel like this affected my career choice in nursing too. I wanted to drop out and work as a full-time phlebotomist so I can be financially secure and help my parents with money too. But then I realized that I’m 20. I’m still young and hope that my family can financially hang on for 2 more years because that’s when I graduate. But overall, I never want to have that same night again.

My dream is to graduate college and become a registered nurse to help patients and use my wages to financially help my parents who are almost retiring.

During my time in high school, I didn’t know what to major in. My older sister who graduated years before me majored in pre-nursing while I was still in high school. Over time in high school I was still undecided to major in a certain career. That’s until COVID-19 hit. School was shut down and I spent most of my time in lockdown browsing the internet. As I was browsing through the internet, I witnessed a lot of nurses quitting their jobs because there was an overwhelming amount of sick patients who were positive with COVID-19 demanding care when every nurse in a hospital couldn’t handle it. I questioned my sister if she was still going to pursue her nursing career. Watching my sister still continuing her nursing career and nurses leaving their jobs, it made me want to pursue the healthcare field. I wanted to nurse at a cardiovascular unit because patients with heart diseases need special care and rehabilitation. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death in the U.S. since most Americans are suffering with obesity, diabetes, and an unhealthy diet. Since cardiovascular diseases are increasing, it would be helpful if someone like me put themselves out to help those who are suffering with this disease. I also decided to work for the pediatrics since I have some sort of personal experience taking care of toddlers in my early years of high school. I would like to further extend my care for children from birth to late teens with expert care in a healthcare setting. The hardship I had to overcome during my years in college was actually continuing the nursing path. In the beginning of fall semester of my junior year, I had an identity crisis. I was behind on my general education classes and I felt bad about that because most juniors complete their gen eds at this point. Because of that, I was comparing myself to other people which brought me down. I told myself,”This is taking too long. I don’t know if doing a couple more years of school just to become a nurse would be worth it.” But then I realized that there are other people that I know who have been in school for over 4 years. At that moment, I knew it was best to take my time in school because I’m still young and taking my time right now and progressing slowly will definitely reward me in the future.

I have various reasons why I decided to pursue a career in nursing. The first reason is because of my older sister. My sister attended college to become a nurse and she recommended that I should attend school to become a nurse and it would be worth taking care of people who are in need of healthcare service. It sounded difficult but I did have an interest in understanding the human body and helping others when it comes to health so I took what she suggested. During my time in high school, I didn’t know what to major in because there are a lot of careers to pursue. I was having some sort of career crisis. Since I looked up to her a lot, I’ve also decided to pursue a career in becoming a nurse just so I could be like her. Right now, my sister is a behavioral therapist for kids who need to catch up on basic motor and cognitive skills such as physically moving and being able to speak. Another reason I wanted to become a nurse is because I have a high interest in understanding the human body. I love to learn human anatomy and physiology because I want to deeply understand what the human body is, how it functions, and why we need to rely on certain fundamentals such as exercising and food to keep us healthy and live longer. If I have enough experience and knowledge to learn about the human body, it would be useful if I could use that in a clinic or a hospital so I could help patients. Interesting fact about learning the human body, it helps me understand what muscle I am working out at the gym and how the nutrition facts in food will affect my body in a healthy way. During the COVID-19 pandemic, half of a million healthcare workers left their jobs because handling patients who were positive with COVID was a hassle. It was really depressing watching the decline in healthcare workers due to the fact that they don’t have enough resources or even the mental stamina to handle patients with such a contagious disease. Occasionally watching people pass away must be difficult for the healthcare workers. Since so many of them left, the upcoming healthcare students such as me can increase the amount of workers in the healthcare field which could make working in hospitals and clinics much easier. It would be helpful if I become a registered nurse so I can help the vulnerable people. One of my goals in nursing is to become a travel nurse. There are different cities in different states in the US that are short of employees in hospitals and clinics and it would be great if I could be their backup. Nursing is one of the most difficult careers because our time and resources in taking care of a patient is limited and we need to execute the process of taking care of patients perfectly.