The nursing industry has some of the best jobs that allow us to help others. You can make a significant impact on a patient's quality of life, and you can also help someone live a longer and better life. In the future, I hope to be a psychiatric registered nurse. Mental health has always been something that has intrigued me and I would love to help others. There is nothing better than the feeling you get after helping someone and seeing them grow and heal. Mental health is a large problem worldwide today and I want to provide care and support others through whatever they are going through. As a high school senior, I have completed two years of health sciences and also a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) internship and a Phlebotomy Tech internship. This has allowed me to see what the nursing world is like and it is something that I have fallen in love with. After going to the hospital for my CNA internship it made me realize how much I love helping others. I was able to help the older patients with anything that they needed. Whether it was helping them go to the restroom or just simply sitting at their side because they needed someone to talk to or because no one would come to visit them. As for phlebotomy, I have discovered that several patients have had bad experiences when they go get blood drawn. Whenever I was at the clinic, the patient always told me how I was so gentle and how they appreciated the fact that I treated them so nicely. We need more medical professionals who treat patients like they are people and not just a disease or illness. I have also donated blood on several occasions and this helped me open my eyes to how life-saving blood donations are. I never really thought that it was too big of a deal until after I donated for the first time. I remember coming home feeling terrible and sick after donating blood but when I got a letter in the mail everything changed. I got a letter a few weeks after I donated blood and it was a girl who was telling me that my blood was what gave her mom a second chance at life. This really touched my heart and made me realize how a lot of things done within the nursing community really benefit and touch the lives of others. Nurses change the world one patient at a time and I hope to be someone who can do that and even more. I want to make an impact in my community and I will do this by fulfilling my dream of become a registered nurse.

With any career that you are pursuing, you should always have career goals and a plan to meet those goals. One of my career goals as a nurse is to be a better advocate. I want to advocate for what I believe in and I want to be able to help and guide my patients as well. Sometimes patients are not treated fairly and are looked at as a disease or a condition. All people deserve to be respected, listened to, and treated as humans. I want to be able to guide them through the medical system and provide resources for any questions or concerns that they may have. I want to be able to provide equal and respectful care to all of my patients because not a lot of nurses respect their patients and their beliefs or what they say. If there are health inequities I want to make influence health policies and create systemic change. Another one of my career goals is to advance my education. As a high school senior, I have already taken some steps toward this. While in high school I have taken college courses, and two health science classes, and I am currently in a Certified Nursing Assistant and a Phlebotomy internship. I would love to continue to advance my education and get extra knowledge and training to show true commitment to my profession. My uncle has now officially retired from the Navy and while he was active things were difficult for him and also our family. My uncle lives in Florida while we live in Mississippi and it is often hard to travel and visit him. He was always constantly busy and he never had time for us to visit him or for him to come to visit us. It is harder on my mom since that is her baby brother who she loves with all her heart, but cannot see him as often as she would like to. I also have a boyfriend who is in the Marine Corps and it is hard for both his family and mine. While he has been gone he has been hurt several times and it is frustrating to think about how I cannot be there for him. There are constant feelings of concern or anxiety because you never know what can happen while a loved one is states away from you. Although most people think that relationships fall apart because your significant other is in the military it is not true. Every time he comes home for a little bit it reminds me how much I love and support him in everything that he does. While he has been gone I have also built a stronger relationship with his mother. His mom has some medical issues and his dad constantly works so I try to go over as much as I can even if it is to help clean or something just as simple as keeping her company. Overall, It is really hard to be away from someone who is your best friend and who you love with all your heart.

My name is Gisselle Hernandez and I am a high school senior who excels academically and loves to listen to heavy metal whenever I can. I have a 3.93 GPA and I have taken several honors, AP, and dual-credit college courses. I have a leadership position for almost every club that I am in. For example, last year I was the Woodwind captain and this year I was drum major to an all-superior marching band. I am also the vice president of the international club and the key club. Another thing about me is that I love to get involved in any way that I can. I have always volunteered whether it was in the community, in church, or at my school. For example, while we were in quarantine the school would give us free lunches and we would go and pick them up but we would give them to homeless people. Although we were struggling with Covid and other financial things, I knew that the homeless people were worse off people they did not have a roof over their heads and they did not have food. It brought a lot of joy to my heart to see the way that their faces lit up when they would receive their bags of food. Although I do have a very busy schedule I do like to do things in my free time. I love to listen to all kinds of music (especially heavy metal and rock), I love to paint, and I love to practice playing flute, piccolo, or piano. I feel like my leadership skills and my love for helping others would greatly benefit me in healthcare. I would like to go to college so that I can get my associate's degree in nursing. Then, I want to further my education to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I am now getting a head start on my career because I have internships for certified nursing assistants and also phlebotomy as a high school senior. Once I get my certification for both of these programs, I will have a spot secured in a clinic or care setting in my area. I need this scholarship award because it would help me with college and with my future career goals. I just finished my Certified Nursing Assistant internship and I am currently working to finish my Phlebotomy internship. I am doing all of this while also taking college courses, AP courses, and other honors classes. It would help pay for college so that I can study to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I am also part of a low-income minority household and any help would be amazing. I plan on paying for my education through scholarships and any financial aid I can get. I also plan of taking advantage of the LPN internship because they pay you to study and you have a guaranteed job. Although most people think of heavy metal music as loud, anxiety-inducing, and just a bunch of nonsense I think otherwise. I think that heavy metal music is expressive and emotional in many different ways. Listening to heavy metal provides an outlet for processing intense emotions such as anger. I listen to heavy metal to relieve my anger or stress and it provides an emotional release for me. I have anxiety and sometimes I just put in my AirPods and turn on some heavy metal music and I feel at peace. People say that I am crazy for listening to music that is violent and satanic but this is because they do not listen closely to the lyrics. If you do not listen to everything all together then of course it is going to sound like a bunch of nonsense no matter the genre of music, but if you listen deeply then you will understand that most songs have more meaning than you think. For example, several heavy metal songs talk about real-world social issues. The diversity of heavy metal is what makes me love it.

In a world full of conflict and trouble, we tend to face adversities almost every single day. After facing adversities, you learn how to adapt and overcome these adversities to grow as a person. Ralph Blum once said ¨The obstacles of your past can become gateways that lead to new beginnings. In reality, several obstacles are too hard for one to handle usually resulting in tragedy and loss, but not everything has to be negative. Several obstacles and adversities end in positivity and help one grow. As a teenager making her college journey, there are several adversities I have encountered. Classes were my main difficulty. As an honor student, I take dual credit college classes, AP classes, and honors classes, and I also currently have two internships. This is all while also being in several extracurriculars and leading them. Balancing my social life with my education was quite difficult, but making a schedule for myself was what helped me get through high school. Me figuring out how to deal with this adversity helped me grow as a person and it helped me stay organized throughout high school. Another adversity I face is being part of a minority group. As someone who is Mexican, minorities never get the same assistance and attention as others. At school, I have had people tell me I am not Hispanic enough simply because I don´t speak Spanish all of the time. I was never really taught how applying to college worked or how filling out the FAFSA worked either. I had to find out how to do all these things on my own because my parents could not help either since neither of them went to college. I have even gotten comments like that from teachers and I´ve even been told that I should be in the kitchen cooking and cleaning because that was how things worked in a machismo culture. This was from male teachers who were Hispanic. Instead of supporting me and helping me find my way through life, they did not offer any assistance towards my college journey. At first, these things affected me because I wanted to always make sure that I fit in and comments like this made me highly upset. I felt like I was not capable of anything and that I would not understand how to get through life. After some time, I started thinking about how I do not always need to fit in somewhere, but instead, I need to be comfortable with who I am and not what everyone wants me to be. I was also told that I would never do good in school because most minorities aren't looked at as super intelligent. Now, I am in the top 5% of my school and I am extremely proud of everything I have accomplished. I stopped caring about what others said and embraced who I was. It did not matter to me that I was labeled as nerdy for taking higher classes and being in the band. It did not matter to me that, according to Hispanic culture, I was supposed to be at home cooking and cleaning. I am choosing what I want to do with my life and I am choosing who I want to be. Sometimes you just need to change your state of mind and how you view things to overcome adversities.