I always thought that social work was limited to Child Protective Services. I knew I wanted to help people but I didn't want to work in CPS. The things you hear about them are that they never actually help anybody, they only tear families apart. While I knew this was an exaggeration, I also knew from speaking with the CPS workers in my life that it is an extremely limited career. I did not want to end up feeling like I was not helping anyone. When I reached high school, one of my teachers was a retired social worker who had worked for a crisis center. This was my first exposure to the idea that social work is a versatile field, and I would soon learn that there are social workers everywhere. I had that teacher every year for those four years, and I learned a lot from her. Most importantly, I learned that I had a passion for social work. There was an assignment in one of her classes where the students had to research different careers in the field of social work. This was when I found out that medical social workers exist and decided to set my sights on work in hospitals. In my first year of college, I became involved in a student organization fronted by the Violence Intervention and Prevention Office at the school. There, some faculty members worked after hours as patient advocates at the local hospital. This only stoked the fires of my ambition, as I became very close with and looked up to the advocates. However, social work is not just about a job, but about advocating for change on a structural level. I've noticed many things in the medical field that harm patients both mentally and physically. I am sure that I will notice even more of these disparities when working in a hospital setting. Things like racism, sexism, and fatphobia consistently get in the way of proper medical care. Plus-sized patients are told to lose weight and sent away without any tests being done. Women are diagnosed with menstrual cramps, and LGBTQ patients are dismissed. Many people of color, particularly the black and indigenous communities, will put off even seeing a doctor due to a history of abuses, and ongoing medical gaslighting. These things put people physically at risk and are unjust. Additionally, there is a lack of trauma education in the medical field, especially in gynecology. Doctors will dismiss patients' anxiety or even panic as being dramatic. All patients are entitled to trauma-informed care. This means an explanation of physical procedures, the right to be informed of alternatives and pursue them, and the right to take triggering procedures--such as pap smears--at their own pace without being judged by their healthcare provider. As a social worker, I plan to fight for my patients. I plan to ensure that their rights and autonomy are respected and to make the process of seeking medical help as easy as possible for them and their families. However, I also plan to fight for the patients I will never meet, so that they also have access to care that is best for them. I plan to advocate for a healthcare system that listens to and works for patients, not one that exploits and ignores them.

I've always known I wanted to help people. In high school, I followed a human service track in electives, as well as organizing and carrying out countless community service projects including but not limited to advocating for schools to become safe from sexual harassment, food drives, and working with younger grades to teach boundary setting. From a young age, I had an interest in psychology and a passion for social justice. I became comfortable in advocate roles and developed a desire to learn everything I could about social injustices and how to fight them. I settled on Social Work as a major when I was a junior in high school, having realized working in a clinical setting as a psychiatrist wouldn't suit me. I wanted to be out in the world, helping those who need it directly. I also spent a lot of time in the hospital as an elementary-aged child. My younger brother had a brain tumor when I was a toddler that came back around when I was in second or third grade. It put my family through a tough time; we spent several holidays in the hospital, and for about a year I would go to the hospital after school, my parents would trade off--one taking me home to stay for the night and the other staying with my brother--and then I would go home for a fast food dinner and to bed for the cycle to repeat the next day. There were times my brother would need both my parents for a night and I would be sent home with my school nurse to stay with her. There are a few things that are inherent to any long-term hospital stay. There are doctors with a list of patients longer than they can handle, and nurses in the beginning phases of burnout. Neither of which makes it any easier to be there. In the time we were there, one of the most important staff was our social worker. She was an advocate for my brother and explained anything she could to the rest of us. I decided my senior year of high school I wanted to do that. My dream didn't just slide into my hands, of course. I didn't have many friends in high school, because I focused so much on school. I didn't get invited places, and I wouldn't have gone if I were. I was only admitted into people's social circles in exchange for help with homework or free tutoring. The pattern continued into college as well, when I immediately took to schoolwork. I rarely go out and don't spend my time fussing about how to meet new people. I ended my senior year of high school with As and Bs and in my first semester of college, I had a 4.0. I went to a school out of state because I had heard their social work program was particularly good, so I tried to keep my grades up to qualify for a small scholarship from the school based on academic merit.

A little over one year before I left my hometown for a college 600 miles away, I began waking in the night with terrible back pain. It was so intense I wouldn't be able to sleep or eat until it passed, which was sometimes days after the fact. I had to miss work and school because I couldn't even walk. The journey to being able to attend college was a long one. For the first six months, my battle was being believed. Something was wrong, it wasn't just that my muscles were tense and I wasn't being dramatic; most people in my life were reluctant to believe that. After months of waking up at least once a week with this pain, my father agreed to take me to the emergency room. Several hours later, I had an answer: scoliosis. A girl I grew up with had scoliosis, and I had assumed it was painless. The problem was less the curved spine and more the nerves it would pinch on sometimes. The emergency room prescribed lidocaine patches and an anti-inflammatory, both of which worked for a wonderful few weeks until I was once again left to the mercy of my spine. Through the sleepless nights and agonizing days, one question became more pressing: what about college? I could barely make the eight-hour drive over. I was scared I'd have to put off going, potentially permanently. My goal is to be a social worker in a hospital, something you need a master's degree for. I didn't know what I'd do with myself if I couldn't do that, because I'd never imagined a different life for myself. The last week before my departure was a game-changer. I had a four-day episode, during which I scheduled an appointment with my clinician to tell her I was worried about the anti-inflammatory not working and she prescribed a muscle relaxer for the nights. I also met with a chiropractor for the first time and explained the urgency of the situation. She squeezed me in every day that week, and my body thanked me. I was still scared of moving. The drive was daunting, and I didn't know if I had done enough. Spoiler alert, I did make the drive. I made it all through my first semester. Not without some effort. Lucky for me, I'm the only person alive to have been helped by the dorm mattresses. I went so long without an episode that now when I do have them, the anti-inflammatory works the way it did in those first few weeks. I found a chiropractor close by and started seeing him regularly, usually squeezing in time before classes. Of course, I still have bad days, but with effort, awareness, and a little bit of luck, I can manage them.

As long as I can remember, I've been completely engrossed in stories and characters which ran rampant in my head. As long as I've had access to the internet, I've been committing them to digital paper and sharing them with others. Some are stories I've kept close since I was toddling around on baby legs, others I planned while driving to work. Stories come to me like breath. While breathing in is nature, sometimes the breathing out is work. To tell a story in words that inspire the reader to feel something is a skill that must be built. Luckily, stories have been told since humanity's debut. A good writer writes every day, but a great writer reads every day. While practice makes perfect, one must know what to practice, so I make time every day to read.

Happiness for much of my life seemed an impossible acheivement. Life felt like a series of let downs and hardship with no payoff. For a child carrying what felt like the world at the time, happiness was something I could only dream of, and I did. I became an avid daydreamer, losing myself in complex worlds of my own creation. I didn't realize until I was much older that I'd developed a habit of escapism. Much of my childhood memories are collored with bright pops of imagined fancy, and it wasn't long until I found myself wanting to share them. It was always a comfort to have something that was only my own, an innocently kept secret held close to my heart. Even as a novice with no knowledge of proper grammar or storytelling, I committed myself to sharing what had always been my strongest comfort. Somehow, the only thing better than holding my worlds safe was passing them to people who felt as strongly about them as I did. Even my least development stories garnered support and love from people who related and felt comforted by what I had created the same way I did. In the end, it wasn't the validation from others that gave me the long sought after happiness. It was the feeling of warmth from doing for others what I had to do for myself. Knowing I gave people the hope I created as such a young child instilled the knowledge that chasing my own happiness includes working to bring it to others.