Nursing has always been a captivating profession for me and was a career I instantly knew I wanted to pursue. This desire to pursue nursing grew with some challenges I faced in life and pushed me towards wanting to achieve my dreams and goals of being a relational and caring nurse and to grow in the areas Cindy so perfectly exemplified of being empathetic, compassionate, intentional, and professional. From early on I loved the sciences and human anatomy, but most importantly loved the idea that I could directly impact people's lives, and help them at their most vulnerable. This passion I had grew tremendously within the past year. I was recently diagnosed with a rare congenital heart defect called, Anomalous Right Coronary Artery. This defect turned my world upside down, as it halted all my physical activity, due to the possibility of immediate cardiac death. I was in and out of hospitals for months going through many different tests. It was a grueling and exhausting process, both physically and emotionally. However, my relationships with my nurses completely changed my experience. They were able to make me feel safe, cared for, and comfortable even with all the uncertainties and fears I was battling. I quickly realized that I wanted to have that same impact on other people's lives, as they had on mine. Nurses are truly the heart of the health care industry, and I want to contribute to the huge difference they make in our world. There are many things that I wish to achieve as a nurse. One of those is to develop positive relationships with the patients I work with, no matter how much time I may have with them. I believe it is extremely important for patients to feel connected to and deeply cared for as more than just a medical condition, and I hope to achieve that in the future. I also believe that as a Christian pursuing nursing, I have the amazing ability to provide holistic care at a higher level. It is crucial to care for a person completely– body, mind, and spirit, and as a Christian, I am putting my faith into practice each and every day, with a unique opportunity to really pour into my patient's spiritual well-being if that is something important to them. Lastly, I hope to at some point work as a pediatric cardiac nurse, so that I can provide care for kids that have had a similar experience to me in hospitals. I believe that I will be able to show empathy and compassion to my patients as Cindy did due to my own experience of being a patient so regularly the past year. It truly showed me how scary being a patient is when you don’t know everything that is going on, and I believe that I will carry those memories throughout my career as a nurse, and will be able to more carefully go about how I approach and care for my patients from that experience. I’m also currently a home health aide and am always very intentional about the quality of care to my clients and the way I deliver certain information to them about updates on their medical conditions, and feel that this experience has well equipped me to continue growing in my intentionality and professionality in the future. I am so excited to continue in my education towards becoming a nurse, and it is largely thanks to people like Cindy that strengthen my excitement and desire to impact the lives of others, the way nurses so greatly do.