The biggest challenge I have had to overcome has been growing up in East Oakland, California. Oakland has so much culture and vibrance that I represent and cherish, but it also has a fair amount of troubling issues that I had to work through. I grew up in the Oakland Unified School District, a school district known for its lack of funding and constant issues of merging/closing schools, teacher strikes, and adoption of charter schools. These issues bled into much of my time in school. I saw a lot of teachers leave during the school year, not having enough textbooks for everyone in class and many of the students around me not believing school was worth their time. My ability to just show up on time to class and do the class work was usually enough for me to get an A in all my classes. Also, since many of the students felt neglected and mistreated, a lot of them spent much of their time skipping class and spending their days in the streets. I saw this play out everyday while taking my bus back home. Robberies, gun violence, fist fights happened far too often around me. Losing people I knew through the justice system or them passing on became recurring as I grew older. All these things that I grew up in or around led to me being underprepared for college. I never had to study in high school and since I went to school in Los Angeles, it was the first time I found myself free to do whatever I wanted. I did not even care to figure out what major I should do. However, as my grades worsened and I became less enamored with my new found freedom, I had to start changing. This is when I became interested in learning about the health system. I graduated Occidental College with a degree in sociology and learned how I could become a becon of change if I further applied myself in the health field. My only issue was that I did not know what I wanted to do in health. After graduating, I interned at different health-related nonprofits and worked as an AmeriCorps at two federally qualified health centers in Oakland. It was during this time I learned what I wanted to do for my career. I fell in love with nursing due to seeing how great nurses can change how people perceive the health care system. As an AmeriCorps, I got to work alongside the nurses and patients and got to talk to them on a one on one basis. I talked to a lot of patients who would always bring up how the nurses at my center kept them coming back because they made them feel like their care was in good hands. The nurses would tell me they worked at these centers in particular because they came from this community and felt they could make an impact on an underserved area that is known for getting a lack of health coverage. Since my time as an AmeriCorps I have continued to work at this non-profit health center while also taking classes to get into nursing school. I have now been accepted into nursing school and plan on using this degree to go back and work in my community to help as many people as possible get the healthcare they have long deserved. I hope through this I can become a becon of change in Oakland and help many of the underserved feel comfortable getting the health services they need.

My interest in becoming a pediatric nurse stems from years of trial and error of searching for the right career path. My mother has been a registered nurse at Children’s Hospital Oakland for over 30 years. Through her I was able to understand what it looks like to be in a profession that you truly enjoy. She always came home with stories about what would happen at the hospital and how she got to see the impact she had on the children she helped every day. She always would tell me while growing up to find myself a passion that motivates me to get up everyday, because she was able to do that while working at Children’s Hospital. However, while I did take her words to heart, I never intended to pursue nursing because I did not want to be exactly like my mother. I wanted to find my own path and not pigeonhole myself into one profession. This is why I tried to pursue almost every other profession while at Occidental College. From statistics, to economics, to pharmacology, to sociology, I pursued everything, but I never felt a true connection with any of them. I ended up settling as a sociology major because I was interested in learning about how our social interactions and determinants impact our society. This propelled my interest into the health field and helping children. I learned and later wrote my dissertation about how social interactions in the health field create different health outcomes depending on race and financial background. In particular, I wrote about how we experience these things at an early age, and these health interactions hold a major impact on how we view the health field as we grow older. While my interest in health grew as I went along in college, my path after college is what led me into pediatric nursing. I came back home and did a one year service as an AmeriCorps Health Fellow. I was able to work in several clinics with people from various professions. My greatest connection while at LifeLong became the pediatric nurse practitioner at LifeLong’s School-Based site in West Oakland. I would work alongside her and I got to witness her energy and compassion while helping the middle schoolers at the clinic. Seeing how enjoyable her job is, is what propelled my interest in pediatric nursing. She would let me shadow her all the time. I got to see how much the kids loved to go get their check ups from her because they trusted her so much. High schoolers that used to go to the middle school would come by and see her because they felt so connected to her. To see this, especially since most of these children were black and brown from low income homes, made me want to become a nurse so bad. Her connection with these children flipped the script on everything I read in college. This experience made me realize why my mom spoke so highly of her job. I got to see what she always talked about first hand. A good nurse can make a huge impact on the lives of their patients and I plan on doing that as well. After I graduate with my bachelors in nursing degree in spring of 2023, I plan on following in my mother's footsteps by becoming a pediatric nurse at Children’s Hospital of Oakland. Through my mother and the people I met while working at LifeLong, I have found that pediatric nursing is a fulfilling profession, and I plan on making it my career.

The trials and tribulations I have gone through while finding my place in the health field is what inspired me to pursue a nursing degree. College is where I first found my interest in health. At Occidental College, I majored in sociology. The classes I took to attain this degree taught me about social disparities and how much of our health needs are based on our racial, financial, and social background. As an African-American that grew up in Oakland, California, I was able to connect how a lot of the issues spoken about in the classroom had impacted my life as I grew up. I then used these tools to intern at different non-profits to get a further understanding of how to use my school work in the workforce. I interned at East Oakland Building Healthy Communities, East Bay Workforce Partnership and LA Care. All three of these internships gave me knowledge of how different organizations work to close the gap on these disparities talked about in the books I read. However, as I graduated Occidental College with my sociology degree, I did not feel it was in my best interest to continue to work at these various non-profits. I still knew health was where I wanted to be, but I was not sure if I was going in the right direction to find my place within it. So, after I graduated I moved back to Oakland and became an AmeriCorps Health Fellow. During my 1 year program I worked at LifeLong Medical Care and worked at 2 different clinics during this time. During the school year, I worked at LifeLong West Oakland Middle School clinic. When the school year ended, I worked at LifeLong East Oakland Health Center. I got to work alongside many people from different sectors of the primary care field. I got to shadow and create programs that catered to helping people from underserved communities learn about the health we provide and also get to do basic front line care like vital checks and patient intake forms. This is where I learned about nursing. Much of my time was spent working alongside the nurses at these clinics. Not only did I find their work rewarding, but I got to learn through them what it takes to be a nurse. A couple in particular took me under their wing after I expressed my interest and let me shadow them whenever I had time in my schedule to do so. This is when I found my calling as a nurse. After AmeriCorps, I went on to do case work at LifeLong Medical Care as a Community Health Worker. When I got off work I would take night classes in order to complete the necessary prerequisites to apply to nursing school. I recently was able to get into Samuel Merritt University and will begin my one year Accelerated Bachelors of Science in Nursing Program this June. I am motivated to become a nurse because I saw first hand the impact a good nurse can have on people who come from backgrounds where the health field is not trusted. I plan on using my nursing degree to work at Oakland’s Children’s Hospital and show the kids that there should be no fear or trepidation into seeking primary care. I also plan on taking my degree a step further in the future and become a nurse practitioner. I hope to take the tools I learn in nursing school to help make a positive impact on the youth I will work for.