When the 2019 version of Little Women came out and my mom finally allowed me to watch it, I was overjoyed. I instantly connected with the movie and it became my favorite comfort movie. On rainy days, sick days, sad days, and happy days, that’s the movie I would watch. I even watched it in the hospital after I had surgery. Some stories entertain us for a moment, but others quietly shape the way we see ourselves and the world around us. For me, Little Women has done exactly that. Every time I watch Little Women, I see pieces of myself in the March sisters and am reminded of the person I hope to become. While many people may see themselves in Jo March, I have always recognized parts of myself in Beth and Amy. Beth’s quiet compassion and Amy’s determination to grow reflect the balance I hope to pursue in my own life. Like Beth, I have always been introverted and drawn to caring for others. Her quiet compassion reminds me that the greatest impacts on someone’s life often come from simple acts of kindness and empathy. In Beth’s world, caring for others doesn’t require a grand stage. It can be found in checking on a neighbor or sharing a kind smile. Beth is the heart of her family and is primarily focused on the well-being of those around her. Those are the qualities I see in myself. I feel the most fulfilled when I am offering support to someone in need. At the same time, Amy’s ambition and dedication to her work reflect my own desire to grow through my education and pursue my goals. Amy is often misunderstood as stubborn, but her true strength lies in her relentless dedication to her craft and her radical self-awareness. She holds herself and those around her to a high standard and she refuses to settle for mediocrity. Amy taught me that true ambition involves the ability to adapt and refine your path until it aligns with your greatest strengths. Throughout high school, I have channeled this same "Amy-like" discipline into my own life. I have taken challenging courses and pushed myself to achieve excellence, not out of vanity, but out of the desire to be useful and to be the best version of myself I can. This drive is precisely why I have decided to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing. In the medical field, the qualities of Beth and Amy are not opposites. Instead, they are requirements. As I laid in my own hospital bed after surgery, I saw this balance in the nurses who cared for me. They possessed Beth’s gentle presence to calm my fears, but also Amy’s sharp, uncompromising competence to ensure my safety. Education allows me to grow in wisdom, abilities, and skills, while using them to care for others. Because of Little Women, I am pursuing education not only to achieve my goals, but also to become someone whose knowledge and compassion for others can truly make a difference in this world.

1 John 4:19 says, “We love because he first loved us.” That verse has been a cornerstone in my life ever since I first accepted Jesus as my savior. What would our world look like if we all loved like Jesus does? Our world would be more patient, more kind, more protective, less proud, less angry, and less selfish. As I continue my educational journey and learn to become a nurse, one of the most important things to me is showing love and compassion to my patients who are struggling. When I first realized Jesus wasn’t just a story from a book, but a presence guiding me, I was sitting in the pews of a chapel on a school trip to the mountains of Montana. I was raised in a Christian family. I grew up going to church, and going to a Christian school, but my faith never felt like my own. It always felt like it was someone else’s. It either was my parents’, my friends’, my teachers’, or my pastors’, never my own. It felt like Jesus was some far-off god who was revealing himself to everyone and loving everyone except for me. I watched how the people around me were transformed when they gave their lives to Jesus. I wanted to be transformed too, but every time I tried to understand and get to know Jesus, it felt like there was something blocking me from having a connection with him. Throughout my life, I had been told over and over that God’s love for me was so deep that it surpassed all understanding, but to be honest, I never truly believed it until one night in Montana. The gentle chords of the guitar and the voices of all my classmates singing Reckless Love by Cory Asbury stopped me dead in my tracks as I was staring at the large wooden cross directly in front of me. As I moved closer to the cross, the rough wood caught my eye. Jesus loved me enough to die on a cross like that, with the wood cutting into him like a knife. I didn’t deserve it, but He died for me anyway. I have made so many mistakes in my life. I have hurt other people and turned away from God more times than I can count, but He still died for me. His love truly surpasses all understanding. Every day, I try my best to love others in the way Jesus would love them. I’m not perfect, but I try to show empathy and compassion to everyone I come into contact with. Every action of love always leads back to Jesus’ love and his ultimate sacrifice. I believe that as a pediatric nurse, I will be able to show love to children, families, and parents, who are broken or struggling. Because Jesus loved me, I aim to share his love with those around me.

I still remember walking into the police station that sunny June afternoon. My legs felt like jello, and the cold, clean, overly polished floors of the police station made my breath catch inside of me. Although it was sunny outside, my mind was dark and dreary, clouded by the one thought that wouldn’t leave: what if the detective didn’t believe me? I used to wonder why victims of grooming or sexual assault didn’t speak up about what happened to them. Then, a trusted adult in my life crossed many boundaries. I was terrified to tell anyone, especially since this man was respected and loved by many. How would people believe me that he did this? Eventually, through the encouragement of my friends, I found enough bravery to tell people in authority. Their shocked eyes said it all: no one expected this from him. I had meetings with detectives, therapists, principals, and people from the court. I finally understood that breathtaking fear that has such a chokehold on victims' lives. The nightmares were the worst though. Every night, I dreaded going to sleep. I couldn’t escape this messed-up situation even in my dreams. Panic followed me everywhere, causing my heart and mind to race uncontrollably. It chased me at home and in public, making it hard to enjoy my summer before senior year. I wanted to run away and hide forever, but I was paralyzed in fear. My dreams of being a nurse started to fade away, and the whole world seemed like it was losing color. I couldn’t eat, and I either slept too much or not at all. My friends tried their best to support me. They called themselves my bodyguards. Gabby would always say, “We’ve got your back, no matter what.” Slowly but surely, I started to feel more and more safe with them. I never had to go anywhere alone; they always went with me to events and never left my side. Something about their presence made me feel more secure. Eventually, I realized that I was no longer hypervigilantly looking around in fear the entire time I was in public. I still had anxious thoughts, but I was able to enjoy my time and focus more on my friends and family. I had never been so grateful for the community around me. Trust had broken me, but it was also rebuilding me. My hopes of being a nurse came back, and I realized that this event wasn’t my whole story. It was just a chapter in my life, but my story will be so much more. I started thinking back to how scared I was to speak up. That’s when I realized that silence isn’t weakness and speaking up (even if it’s later) takes a lot of courage and strength. I had a sudden rush of empathy for other people’s silence and I started to redefine my definition of strength. Strength doesn’t always look like not letting a situation affect you. Strength can be vulnerability, honesty, and using my story to help others. I now realize that victims have more going on beneath the surface than what meets the eye. Healthcare workers, especially nurses, are among the first people to recognize the signs of human trafficking and sexual assault. I was violated, but being a victim doesn’t define who I am. I want to protect anyone else from the same thing happening to them. I almost drowned in the weight of my trauma, but now I can teach others to swim in theirs.

Under the gray rock in my backyard, there were always injured bugs to find. Whether they were worms, roly-polies, or moths, I used to craft miniature stretchers out of leaves and sticks for them. I was young, but I was so fascinated by the way their bodies worked. I wanted to understand what was wrong with them. My sister and I cared so deeply that we brought the bugs into our playhouse and tried to fix them up in whatever ways we could. We called it our “Bug Hospital.” It wasn’t until later in life that I connected my desire to help those bugs heal with my desire to become a nurse. That desire became clearer one afternoon in 2020 when I experienced intense abdominal pain and was rushed to the hospital. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I remember feeling terrified. The only thing that helped me during this time were the nurses. The nurses listened to me and made me feel heard. They didn’t make me feel bad about crying, and something about their presence made me feel secure. I ended up having an appendectomy, but the nurses explained what was going to happen to me. All of a sudden, the hospital wasn’t a scary place anymore. It was a safe space of clarity. When I was wheeled out of the hospital after my surgery into the bright sunlight, I realized that I want to be that person to others: the person that makes others feel safe in a scary, unpredictable world. As a child, I also faced recurrent kidney issues that required frequent appointments and blood draws. The first couple times I had to get blood drawn, I would scream, kick, and hit. I would have to be held down by the nurses. The nurses gave me new tips every time and their strength and confidence made me feel brave. Over time, I got more and more brave every time I had to get blood drawn. It felt like they were passing some of their strength onto me. Because of them, I found the courage to do things I previously refused to do. To me, that is what part of being a nurse is: passing strength on to those who need it. Now, when I walk into a hospital, I feel a sense of purpose and belonging. As I grew older, I chose to further explore my interest in nursing. I loved my freshman year biology class, especially when we were learning about the human body. During my junior year of high school, I enrolled in Health Career Foundations at Kent Career Technical Center, where I gained hands-on exposure to all different sorts of medical careers. From studying anatomy to learning how to take vital signs, that class was the highlight of my day and it helped confirm that nursing was what I wanted to do. The following year, I enrolled in an NT/PCT course to earn my certification and continue building my skills. My long-term goal is to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. I am fascinated by the complexity of the human body, in addition to being drawn to the emotional side of care. I want to help patients who are struggling in their bodies to feel at peace in their mind. I know how it feels to be weak, vulnerable, and afraid. I aim to share some of my strength with patients who are struggling in similar ways, giving them a voice and being a safe place for them. To me, that’s what being a nurse is all about.