I have diagnosed attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), generalized anxiety disorder, and dermatillomania, which is a form of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). I am also a nursing student. A little background on myself is that I am 21-years-old, I have five younger siblings, and my parents are divorced. My parents got divorced when I was 17-years-old and the youngest was 6-years-old. My parents coparent very well and only got divorced, because they had fallen out of love, but growing up with them together most of my life to them not being together, it was hard. I think what was the hardest part, was that my youngest sister would not really know what having parents who are still together would feel like. I love my family with all of my heart, but that is where my mental health issues started overflowing and never stopped. Some of these mental health disorders are genetic, like the anxiety and the ADHD. My mom grew up in an abusive household. Her biological father had abused her and my grandma in many ways, which set the path for their mental health disorders. My mom, as a child, had been molested by him as well. To this day, she still works on herself, but it is a lifelong process. I am incredibly grateful that she is still here with me today, because then I would not have been born, I would not have had any siblings like mine, and been blessed with the dad that I do have. This has really impacted my experience with my mental health, which has encouraged me to shape my goals, it has shaped my relationships, and how I understand the world. My mental health disorder experience, has shaped me into who I am today and the aspirations that I have. In nursing school, I have been repeatedly taught about therapeutic communication. It is a learned technique to be able to talk therapeutically to a patient in a way that benefits their healing processes. My goal in life is to be a pediatric nurse. I have a love for children's growth. I currently work at a daycare and I will soon be a nursing assistant at a big children's hospital. My mental health has had a huge part in shaping this goal, because some where along the way, I had come to the conclusion that I am able to bond with children, talk with them, and educate them, because I can relate to them mentally. They will not ever judge as hard as adults can because they are so pure, innocent, and full of life. They are the most honest human beings that people create. Adults are who they are today because of how they grow up. If I can be that hope, kindness, and caregiver to these children who need this support system, so that they will grow up and learn about positivity, then I will be that person for them and their families. I want to change their lives in the most positive ways possible. My brain is chemically unbalanced in a way that can make me negative towards myself. I cope with this by always bring positivity and kindness every where that I go. Everyone is going through something different, so be kind, because kindness is free. In the relationship aspect of my mental health experience, I have never been closed off about advocating for mental health. I have never been embarrassed of my mental health disorders until recently. The diagnosis that has affected my relationships with people the most is my ADHD. I get distracted, change subjects, and interrupt people by mistake a lot of the time, because if I don't say what I am thinking then I will forget it the next second. My ADHD causes me a lot of memory issues. Sometimes the things I say to others may not make sense. I have had other people, who were my friends at the time, overly joke around about my intelligence to a point where I started to feel really anxious and depressed over it. It has made me feel embarrassed to have the brain that I have. I am growing every day and I have realized that I am not the only nursing student with this issue either. Thankfully, my college allows me to have distraction-free testing accommodations. With that said, it has shaped how I understand the world and how I provide for my patients'. My experience with mental health has given me a better understanding of the world we live in. I was able to really connect with a patient recently, to ensure that this patient did not feel alone, by using my experience with mental health to help let that patient know that this was a safe environment. That patient had left a huge impact on me and was the youngest one I have had during this most recent clinical rotation. This patient's age and personality had made me reflect on myself and made it that much easier to provide the safety and quality care that this patient needed. I do not regret who I am today because of my mental health. Growth never stops. Each day is a new day to wake up and learn to respect myself. I will never stop learning and educating myself on how I can be a better me. I will use this to always be an advocate for mental health awareness. Nobody is alone, and I am here for every single person no matter what.

1. I deserve this scholarship because my mom had heart surgery. I also deserve it because I have ADHD and persistent procrastination in focusing long enough to even type this. 2. My academic goals are to be able to focus long enough to pass classes and finish this sentence. 3. I have overcame the obstacle of trying to pass this semester (Spring 2022) and procrastinating for the five minutes it took to also finish this sentence.

Advocacy is defined "as any action that speaks in favor of, recommends, argues for a cause, supports or defends, or pleads on behalf of others" (Alliance for Justice, n.d., para. 1). As a nursing student, I have been taught in each of my classes about the quality of advocating for our patients'. In the past, I have always believed policy to be only within the government and a start for causing conflict if anyone were to share their views, because that is what I saw. I am all about positivity, so I had thought of politics as being somewhat of a negative aspect. Recently, in this past semester, I had taken a nursing course called "Health Care Policy". It has really opened my eyes to the impacts of policy in the hospital and how it effects staff, patients', their families, and more. I had learned that for most people to advocate for change, they had started their journey through something that personally impacted them. This class was that impact for me and educated me on the health care issues in America with our diverse nation. I had especially been immersed into being taught about vulnerable populations and how nurses can influence change for these groups. With all of this in mind, it has brought me to the realization that advocacy should not be feared, and I have just begun my journey of truly understanding how to show up for an individual and the community. The story of a time that I had endorsed an individual, which endorsed a community at the same time, was in advocating for a former nurse from Tennessee, named RaDonda Vaught. In 2017, Vaught had made a medication error that led to the fatality of a 75-year-old patient. To sum it up, she had immediately reported it and been honest from the beginning. The hospital it had happened at, however, had kept it hidden from the government and the public, while also making a settlement with the patient's family that required them to not speak of it. In cases like medication errors, hospitals are supposed to create plans of improvement that remove the possibility for having a similar event take place. The hospital fired Vaught quickly, but inevitably, in 2018, an anonymous source reported it to state and federal officials. The Assistant District Attorney, Chad Jackson, wanted to criminally charge Vaught, but no actions were taken against the hospital. On March 25, 2022, the jury found RaDonda Vaught guilty of criminally negligent homicide and abuse of an impaired adult. She is to be sentenced on May 13, 2022, the day after National Nurses Week ends. I have been publicly advocating for her to receive clemency. Advocating for RaDonda Vaught has impacted me by providing me with feelings of honor to be standing besides nurses all around the world in asking for clemency. The patient's family had said that their loved one would have forgave her and that they are more mad at the hospital. This case has inspired me to look out for a profession that is struggling already due to the pandemic. The American Nurses Association (ANA) agrees that these criminal charges are wrong. ADA Jackson is showing that the honest reporting of medical errors could come with criminal charges. Vaught did not hide it, the hospital did. Nurses may be standing on the front lines being "health care heroes," but our heroes in our hospitals are still humans who have the potential to make human error. Support our caregivers. Reference: Alliance for Justice. (n.d.). What is advocacy [PDF]? Alliance for Justice. https://mffh.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/AFJ_what-is-advocacy.pdf