My mental health has changed dramatically in the last four years. I had two children in two years and remain in that long three-year postpartum period still. As a single mom, I have struggled with postpartum depression and even more so, postpartum anxiety. I have been a nurse for going on fourteen years in high stress settings such as the emergency department and the helicopter and have never experienced anxiety in the way I am since I’ve had my children. Initially, I let my mental health get the best of me and really control my day-to-day life. After realizing that I was having postpartum mental health struggles, I have re-prioritized my life. I make sure that I am making mental health my priority now. To do that, I prioritize sleep, alone time, and self-care any time that I am able. I know that seems very miniscule in the grand scheme of things, but being alone with two toddlers constantly can make taking basic care of yourself very difficult. Adding returning to school as a graduate student at the same time my three-year-old daughter is starting preschool is adding another level of stress. I spent a lot of time deciding if this was the best choice for our family for me to return to school at this time, knowing that it is another added stress. However, starting school now means that I will have completed my family nurse practitioner program before my oldest child starts kindergarten. I am motivated to further my career and be able to increase my earning potential. Being able to make more money will allow me to do all of the things with my children and for our family that I want to do. My mental health affects my personal life more than it affects my academic performance, or at least so I think. Regardless of my stress or depression, I am fueled to get done whatever I need to get done for school. The offset of that is that I let my mental health affect my personal life more than it should. I take all of the stress of school home to my family instead. I have a bad habit of letting the house get extremely cluttered when I’m overwhelmed. Unfortunately, I am someone that is extremely bothered by clutter. Having a cluttered house equals having a cluttered mind. While I am in school, I am going to strive to keep my house and car clean spaces to decrease the anxiety that I experience at home. I am dedicated to maintaining a calm and stable space for my children even though I am increasing my stress by attending school. Hopefully I will continue to learn to balance life as a single mom with two toddlers, working full-time hours, and going to school. I am doing my best for my family to squeak by unscathed from this added stress to be able to provide a better life for us all.

Nothing competes with the chaos of emergency medicine, or so I thought. I worked the first twelve years of my nursing career in the emergency department and in the back of a helicopter. The quiet moments on shift were rare, while the moments spent with screaming families, wearing fluids that did not belong to me, and running around were plentiful. For a very long time, the thing that defined me the most was being a emergency medicine nurse. Then I gave birth to two babies in two years and learned a whole different level of chaos. No one prepared me to be a single mother or for what life looks like with two under two. I had to take a step back from emergency medicine to a job in urgent care. I had to take on a new, less stressful role as a nurse to offset the new level of stress being a single mom to two toddlers. Luckily, I had completed my first master’s degree while working twenty-four hour shifts as a flight nurse before I had my children. This allowed me to work extra hours teaching undergraduate nursing while working full time in urgent care. I grew up in a family who always had what we needed, but certainly did not have money for the things I wanted. My parents worked for every dime they had and as an adult, I realize that they did absolutely everything they could to provide for me and my two sisters and am so grateful for it. But as a mother myself now, I want more for my children. I don’t want to spoil them, but I do want to have extra money to do fun activities. I want them to have book fair money, treat money, and field trip money. I want them to be able to choose to go away to summer camp when the time comes if they want to go. And financially, I can’t provide those things right now. I have chosen to return to school for a post master’s Family Nurse Practitioner certificate. Working as a provider will increase my financial earning potential and also allow me a better schedule to be present with my children. I want to be able to attend all of their activities and special events. I can vividly remember my parents having to miss my activities because they had to work, and I don’t want that same experience with my children. My children are the best part of me, and they are so much better than me. I am willing to sacrifice time, sleep and sanity for the next two years to complete this program to give us all a better life together. As an adult, I am certain that my parents did the best that they could for themselves, my sisters and me. When my children are adults, I want them to feel as I feel about my parents, and have no questions that I did everything that I could to give us all the best life possible.

I’m not sure that I chose nursing as much as the nursing path chose me. At eighteen I did not know what career path I wanted to take. I can vividly remember sitting at the dinner table with my sister and brother-in-law while they motivated me to choose a career path. After what seemed like countless suggestions, my sister said, “what about nursing?” And the rest is history. While I don’t have a heart wrenching story of why I chose nursing, my career has been fueled by passion. I started out as a new graduate nurse in the emergency department. The chaos of the department made me buzz with adrenaline. Every shift that I clocked in for, I was hitting the ground running, consuming knowledge and performing new skills. I drank it all in and quickly moved up the chain becoming a triage nurse, trauma nurse, and charge nurse. I was looked at as a resource within our department and started precepting new graduate nurses as well. After six years spent in the emergency department, I became a flight nurse. This took my career to new heights, literally and metaphorically. The education that I received while working as a flight provider was endless. During this time, I also completed my first master’s in nursing education so I could start sharing my skills to undergraduate students. I could never be more grateful for the opportunities that I received while flying. The scope of practice that I was able to utilize while flying was larger than any role that I could ever have as a nurse within a hospital setting. This is what has driven me to continue my education once again to become a Family Nurse Practitioner. I want to be able to maintain that larger scope of practice as a practitioner that will give me the ability to have a greater impact on the patients that I see and treat. I’ve been a nurse for going on fourteen years and I am still fueled by passion for this career. I am dedicated to helping others live their best lives while I navigate the opportunities to give my own family our best life. Having additional financial support to return to school to complete my Family Nurse Practitioner would help take off some of the stress of returning to school as a single mom with two toddlers.

From the moment I was old enough to remember, I have wanted to be a caretaker of others. I’m not sure if it’s the Virgo in me or my love of people that led me to a career of public service. I have been working as a nurse now for going on fourteen years. In those fourteen years, I have been using my education and skills to serve my community. I spent the first twelve years of my career working in the emergency department and the helicopter as a flight nurse. I have carried the people of my community and their family members through some of the worst days of their lives. My shoulders have held their tears and the weight of their grief. I have seen horrific things that no one should ever see. I have held the hands of my community members through their hardest times, but I have also been there in triumph. I have delivered new lives into this world, cheered when we’ve brought the dead back to life, and cried tears of relief when scans have come back clean after years of disease. I had two babies in two years which demanded a step back from the stress of the emergency department and helicopter. I have spent the last two years working in urgent care serving my community for what I thought would be its lesser needs. However, I have been surprised at how many patients show up to an urgent care with an emergency that needs to be re-directed to the emergency department. In those moments, my coworkers have been glad to have my skill set there to handle the emergency until they could get to definitive care at the emergency department. Amidst working full-time as a nurse, I also teach clinical for the local university in my community for their undergraduate nursing program. I strive to help educate the future nurses for our community and share my knowledge with them. I want to help build up our nursing services in our community so that everyone can receive the care they need whether they are seen in an office or in the hospital. I have applied for and been accepted into the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Illinois State University. It is through this program that I will build my skills and knowledge up over again to be able to provide care to our community at a higher level. With this new level of education, I will be able to be a leader in our community for excellent health care and giving back to the community.

Like Joseph was, I am in the middle of my career and choosing to return to school to become a nurse practitioner. I have been accepted to Illinois State University and will start my program this month. A lot has happened in my career to lead me to this point. I started out as a new grad nurse in the emergency department. I loved it and drank in every moment of chaos, death, celebration, and triumph. Being in the emergency department fueled me to continue my education. I wanted every leadership role, certification, or advancement that was available to me. After a year, I was allowed to triage and direct the flow of care. I became a charge nurse and a resource in the department. I chaired our unit council and drove our department in the direction of education. After two years there, I was offered the opportunity to go to trauma school and become certified as a trauma nurse specialist. This was a huge step forward for me in my career. It made me marketable and skilled in a way that I hadn’t previously been. I started orienting new grad nurses and paramedic students. I loved to teach. When the opportunities ran out for me at the facility that I’d spent the first four years of my career at, I got a job in the emergency department across town. There I had a whole new challenge and new staff to learn from. I spent two more years there before I was offered the opportunity to test and interview as a flight nurse. I had never previously even considered flight nursing, but an old friend reached out about an opening at their base. The next day I was at their base going on a test flight. I tested for the job, interviewed and was on a flight to Denver Colorado two weeks later for new hire orientation. I worked for AirMethods, one of the largest air ambulance companies in the world. Flying gave me the education that I always wanted as a nurse. After six years spent in the emergency department, I felt like I was hitting a ceiling in the education area. Flying gave me the biggest scope of practice anyone working as a nurse could possibly have. I learned skills that are usually only practiced by physicians and also learned the intricacies of aviation. I learned what it truly meant to be a provider, and I wanted to share those skills. During my twenty-four-hour shifts, I completed a master’s in nursing education so I could teach undergraduate nursing and share my knowledge. I wanted to help shape the future of nursing and I did just that. I teach clinical for undergraduate nursing at Illinois State University, where I will return as a graduate student this month. While nervous to start the program, I know this is the right next step for my career. I am the single mom of two toddlers aged two and three. I will be able to complete this program in two years, so I will be done before my oldest starts kindergarten. This new role as a nurse practitioner will give my family the financial support that we need to have the opportunities I want for my children. I am doing the best I can to make our finances work for me to return to school but could sure use some help to ease the burden on myself and my children. Thanks for your consideration.

My mother was diagnosed with Hodkin’s Lymphoma prior to giving birth to me. I think most people would think that it wouldn’t affect me since it was before I was born. While Hodgkin’s is very treatable now, in the 1980’s, it was not so easily treated. Luckily, my family lived near Rush University Medical Center where my mother received excellent care. She was told that due to her treatments, she would never have children again. During her treatment, she found out that she was pregnant with me. Because she was undergoing chemotherapy, her doctors suggested she abort her pregnancy, but my mother refused. I was born without all the potential problems that her doctors were worried about. She went into remission and continued raising me and my sisters with my father. When I was age five, my mom thought I had shaved all the hair off of my body. When I finally convinced her I hadn’t, she took me to the doctor. They could not find any reason why the hair on my body seemed to all fall out apart from my eyebrows, eyelashes and the hair on my head. I went on through life completely normally until age twenty-seven when the hair on my head started falling out. Now I am age thirty-five and I have shaved the little hair on my head off, my eyebrows and eye lashes have all fallen out and I wish I had the hair in my nose to trap dust particles back. My mother’s cancer has certainly affected how I walk through life. Initially I was devastated when the long curly hair on my head started to fall out, but now I am confident in who I am as a person both with and without hair. My children see me confident with my bald head and confident in the wigs I wear, when I choose to wear them. I have so much more empathy for people who undergo cancer treatments and lose their hair and those who are diagnosed with alopecia, an autoimmune disease where the hair falls out. I feel empowered to connect with patients who may look different than everyone else. I have noticed that many patients connect with me more easily because they find me to be coming from a place of understanding and vulnerability. I want to continue my education to became a family nurse practitioner and connect with patients on this deeper level. I have been accepted to the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Illinois State University and hope to be able to find the financing to help me help cancer and alopecia patients in my community.

The first concert that I went to was Bare Naked Ladies. I was ten years old, and I went with my parents. It was my mom’s favorite band, but I liked them too. I was drumming with excitement to attend my first concert. A few months prior, my sisters, who are nine and eleven years older than me, attended a Dave Matthews Band concert that I for sure thought would take me to go with them. Turns out, they took one of their friends instead of their baby sister. I had felt slighted since that happened. When my mom realized how sad I was about missing out of a concert with my sisters, she got us tickets to see Bare Naked Ladies. I put on what I thought was my cutest and grow up outfit to go to the show. We went to dinner before the concert, and I couldn’t sit still at the table while trying to eat. When we arrived at the venue downtown Chicago, I had no idea what to expect. When there were opening acts, I was shocked that you got to experience additional bands before the main event. It was an added bonus that I’ll never forget being shocked existed. My mom and I stood the entire show dancing and singing along while my dad sat back and watched us enjoying the moment. I zonked out and slept the entire drive home after all of the excitement. I knew then that live music would play an important role in my life. Live music seems to have this emotional way of connecting friends, family, and strangers alike. It creates a bond of this brilliant experience that you have all gone through together. I have been searching for that same feeling at every live show that I’ve attended since then and I’ve always found it. It is horribly difficult to choose a favorite concert, so I’m going to choose my first music festival. On a whim, one of my friends wasn’t able to attend a music festival that she had bought tickets for, and I was able to go in her place. I had just finished working a night shift from seven pm to seven am, when I ran home, grabbed a bag and was picked up by friends to drive up to Somerset Wisconsin for Summerset music festival. It was my first EDM music festival. The energy was palpable. I don’t think that I could ever describe enough details about this musical experience for anyone to understand the power it holds in my brain. It was magical to say the least. The crowds full of people caring for each other and looking out for each other, the lack of judgment from anyone around us, and the music connecting everyone together on another level seems unreal when I think back on it. I have experienced that same feeling when at other music festivals, but nothing can compete with that first experience. I fully understand why people commit their lives to traveling to music festivals and music events. That connection between the music and the people is unlike any other. The photo attached is of me at that first festival I attended.

My name is Emily Ruedi. I am a thirty-five-year-old single mother of two toddlers, aged two and three years old. I have been a nurse for going on fourteen years now, with the majority of those years spent working in the chaos of the emergency department and the back of a helicopter as a flight nurse. I have always had a drive in me to achieve. I am not sure if this comes from the way that I was raised, in which I was taught that you work hard for everything that you have or if it was something that I was born with as a type A Virgo personality. I grew up in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago but did not come from a wealthy family. My parents scraped by each of them working multiple jobs to put me and my two sisters through private schooling. I was always surrounded mostly by friends who came from wealthy families. To have to learn why I could not afford the same things or opportunities as the friends I grew up with was difficult. As I’ve grown older, I have come to appreciate the tenacity in which my parents fought with to get us the opportunities that we did have growing up. Seeing my parents work so hard to support our family is what has given me the sense of accountability that I have. I have had a job since I was fourteen years old because I knew that if I wanted additional things, that I had to work for them myself. Nothing was handed to me, and while it was frustrating at the time, I appreciate it now. I have the values for hard work and money because of my parents. For my undergraduate program, I applied endlessly for scholarships and worked as many hours as I could to save for school. I graduated without having to take out student loans, which helped me tremendously as a new graduate nurse not having to worry about paying money back. I have been motivated to continue on that path of financial responsibility. I have worked my way through various roles in nursing that have helped me progress professionally and financially. I have participated in every clinical ladder, every promotion, and every opportunity that was available to me. I am held accountable by my upbringing. The values that my parents instilled in me that hard work makes a difference and pays off. Now that I have two children of my own that I support without financial support, I want to be able to give them the same opportunities and more that I was given. My values have shifted slightly to hold me accountable not only for myself but for my children. As toddlers, they are currently reaping the rewards of my hard work, just as I did from the hard work of my parents. I want to raise them with the same values instilled in me by my parents. I can only hope that by taking this next step in my career to become a Family Nurse Practitioner through the program to which I’ve been accepted to at Illinois State University will further demonstrate my commitment to education, the nursing profession, and my financial goals for myself and my children.

My hands were shaking as I prepared to do my first intubation on a scene flight. I had just gotten off of orientation as a flight nurse and had yet to use this skill. The patient was a sixteen-year-old girl, also named Emily. She had been ejected from a vehicle that crashed out on some country road in the middle of nowhere. By the time ground emergency services called for the flight team, the patient’s father had arrived on scene. He was wringing his hands and had eyes on me like a hawk. My paramedic partner’s calm presence behind me reassured me that I was going to make it through this call. And I did indeed make it through that call and hundreds more just like it. I’ve been a nurse for fourteen years now and while I have worked the majority of my career in the emergency department, the very wide scope of practice that I was allowed while practicing as a flight nurse motivated me to return to school to advance my career further. I applied and have been accepted into the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Illinois State University. This will be the next step in my career towards having the ability to be the team leader and make a deeper impact with patients in their care plans. I have always worked hard as a member of the team to create positive changes in the patients’ care plans, but becoming a provider will allow me to help at the next level. I am a single mom to two toddlers aged two and three years old. I am their sole provider and do not get any financial help. Returning to school comes at a great cost, both financially and physically. Financially, I am unsure as to how I am going to pay for the two additional years of schooling. However, I find it harder to come to terms with being away from my children physically for more time than I already am. I work full-time hours as a nurse to support myself, my children, and our thirteen-year-old rescue dog, Pebbles. Going back to school means additional hours away from them when I need to be in class and completing clinical hours. Emotionally it is hard to dedicate that time to school instead of my children, but I also have the additional cost of childcare to have them well-cared for while I am in class or clinical. I know that going back to school is the best choice that I can make for both me and my children to give us the opportunities that we have not previously had. I am taking a leap of faith that I will figure out the financial side of this to give us all a better life, and in turn, be able to truly give the patients I care for a better life at the highest level that I can practice.

You are going to need more than a weekend to binge this series. Grey’s Anatomy has been a constant in my life since it initially aired in two thousand and five. There are now twenty seasons containing hours upon hours of content. While the cast has changed over the many years since it aired, there are a few constant characters who pull on the heartstrings. The writer and creator Shonda Rhimes has a knack for developing characters into family, friends, and foe alike. She brings out the best and the worst of all of the characters in the most realistic ways, which makes it relatable. At the time the first season came out, I was a junior in high school. Every Thursday night after cheer practice, I would go over to my best friend’s house to watch it together. We would have snacks and sit with our bodies squished up into balls with excitement for what was going on during the episode. We’d wait in anticipation during the week to get to that Thursday night new episode. It didn’t change any when we went to college. That same friend and I lived together for eight years after high school. And every Thursday was Grey’s night. We’d make dinner and watch it together. Even if we were going out after, we’d finish watching the new episode and then make our way out for the night. Our other friends always knew that’s what we’d be doing first. Now as adults with our own children, we still watch the new episodes, but more so, we re-watch the first four seasons over and over. I don’t know if it’s because those seasons are truly our favorite or because we watched them during what felt like the best time frame in our lives. We were young, single, and childless, much like the characters on the show. Oddly enough, I also ended up working in healthcare, which felt familiar after watching Grey’s Anatomy for so many years leading up to me working professionally. I worked the first twelve years of my professional career as a nurse in the emergency department and in the back of a helicopter. The chaos and trauma of Grey’s Anatomy felt very much like the chaos and trauma that I was experiencing in real life at work. It takes a very special person to create a show that depicts such rawness and real emotion surrounding a topic as delicate and as rough as healthcare, but Shonda Rhimes did it beautifully with Grey’s Anatomy. There is no show that I would recommend before this one. I think it has had more of an effect on me than I ever realized…my son is named Grey.

I am definitely a Starbucks girlie. I grew up with a mother that worked at Starbucks. I think it is because my mom worked there the majority of my upbringing that Starbucks always felt like home to me. I’d walk in and smell that strong coffee and it reminded me of the smell on my mom’s skin when she would get home from work after running around for long hours all day. It was lost on me at that young age that she was working there to be able to help provide for me and my sisters. My dad was already working multiple jobs, so when I became school age, my mother got a job at Starbucks. She worked her way up to becoming the manager, which she remained the entire time she worked there. I thought it was the coolest thing that after school, my friends and I would walk to Starbucks and my mom would make us all free drinks. We felt fancy and like we belonged there amongst the adult crowd because she worked there. As I’ve gotten older, I realize the sacrifices she made working there. She was awake long before the sun and worked endlessly long hours on her feet. She dealt with rude and demanding customers. But she also had wonderful regulars and always spoke about her job like she loved it. She would bring me home the newest tumblers, T-shirts and those old-school stuffed animal bears wearing seasonal outfits that changed for every holiday. She made a sacrifice into something that felt like a home away from home for me. I didn’t really become an actual coffee drinker until college. Initially, the chai tea latte was the star of the show for me. When I began working night shift and then also gave birth to two children, I needed more caffeine. I am now a cold brew drinker. I go to Starbucks daily. It is my treat of the day, every single day. My favorite cold brew is their pumpkin cream cold brew. The fall seasonal cold brew. Although it is a cold drink, it feels like the warm hug of a day that I would walk into the Starbucks where my mom worked years ago. The pumpkin cream cold brew feels like I’m ten years old, curled up in a big armchair in Starbucks doing my homework while waiting for my mom to get off shift. Starbucks will always feel like home to me.

The year is nineteen ninety-five and the soundtrack is a Disney CD playing through the entertainment center in my parents living room. In my sister’s hands is an original Nintendo controller ferociously being slammed on as my cousins and I cheer her on. Mario Brothers was and is our favorite game. We would take turns between playing the game and being a part of the cheering section. It took the whole team of us to advance through the different levels. We swore that muting the music that went with the game and playing the Disney CD made us beat the different levels. The music in the game on the more difficult levels was “scary” and we would be goners for sure with that music playing. However, the Disney CDs blasting their cheerful melodies in the background helped us stay calm and advance onwards through the levels. We played sitting in two cheers from the dining room table set up in front of the television and there were always snacks galore to keep us fueled on our missions. There are many things that make me think about my sisters and cousins, but Nintendo and Disney music are two of my absolute favorite. I will forever be seven years old making my way through the Mario Brothers.

Success is working to live and not living to work. My answer to this question would’ve looked very different just a few years ago. I spent the first twelve years of my nursing career working in the emergency department and in the back of the helicopter as a flight nurse. I thrived on the chaos of critical care, and I poured myself into work. Being a nurse is what defined me as a person for a very long time. Being a nurse is definitely still a strong piece of what defines me as a person, but that’s just it, it is now only a piece. I am a single mother to two toddlers, aged two and three. They are the best thing that I have ever done and by far, require the most work and energy. I love that they are able to see me working and being successful professionally. But I also want them to see me succeed as a mother, as a family member, as a sister, a daughter, and a friend to the important people in our lives. I want them to see me be able to be there for them and for others as we navigate life. I want them to know I am there no matter what, for the important moments and for the insignificant laughs or tears after a long day. I am no longer defined by my career and yet, my career is what made me who I am. I don’t think that there is anyone who has worked in critical care for any period of time who can say that they were not affected in other areas of their life. Critical care shows you time and time again that life is short, and you should live it to its fullest capacity of your choosing. For the first twelve years of my career, I chose to thrive in the chaos and put my career first before anything else in my life. I have no regrets doing that. I immersed myself in knowledge and any available classes, I worked overtime to make the money that I wanted, and I advanced my career up the chain. While I loved being able to put my career first, I am no longer choosing that. I am now choosing to put my children first. I am choosing to put my family and friends first. I am honestly choosing myself first. For the first time in a long time, I am choosing myself first. For me, that entails returning to school to become a nurse practitioner. I have been accepted to the Family Nurse Practitioner program at Illinois State University. The program will take me two years to complete since I can only return part time in order to continue working full time to provide for my children. I do not receive any financial support for my children, and I manage on my own. Becoming a nurse practitioner will help me to increase my earning potential and give myself and my children the life and opportunities that I want. Being successful will look like me working a job that I love to be able to come home and spend the meaningful, important time in my life with the meaningful people to me. This scholarship will help me to pay for school so I can continue focusing on my children as their sole provider and parent. This scholarship would make a difference in me being able to spend more time with my children instead of working extra shifts to pay for school. This scholarship for me could be life changing. I appreciate your consideration.