My greatest achievement to date would be my graduation from my 400-hour, 10-week firefighter class. I graduated with the academic achievement award for my group of recruits and went on to pass both my Firefighter I and II commission tests for my state certificates. One of the reasons for this being my greatest achievement has much less to do with the fact that it was the class that gained my entry into the career field that I felt called to, and more to do with the fact that I dropped out of the first class four months before the class that I made it all the way through. I dropped out of the first class due to my breaking my knee two weeks into it and getting relegated to light duty and administrative duties after week five of the class. Overall, it was a really dark time for me, since I was faced with the choice to keep going or to give up and find a different field to get into. Through that time, as I deliberated back and forth on whether it was worth it, I learned a lot about myself. Growing up, my father spoke about having an “indomitable spirit” and being stubborn enough to stick at things that were worth working towards. I had heard him my entire life talk about this, but when I was on light duty and then administrative duty while waiting for the next class date, I had the time to mull it over and decided what that meant for me personally. To me, having that indomitable spirit is not not getting knocked down, but getting back up and keeping at it no matter how many times you get knocked down. My career in the fire service as a firefighter-paramedic was my dream career, and it was worth it to keep fighting to achieve that position. What I saw as a near world-ending setback ended up being the push that I needed to harden my resolve and understand how much this actually meant to me. I do not think I would have attacked that next class with the same energy and eagerness if I had not had that reality check that happened because of my knee breaking. I hope to remain in my position as a full-time firefighter-paramedic in my hometown’s fire department until retirement, climbing the promotional ladder at a reasonable pace during my career. With my degree in General Psychology with specializations in Crisis Counseling and Criminal Psychology, along with an undergraduate certificate in Military Resilience, I hope to work in or create my own program that helps deal with first responder PTSD and mental health.

My name is Jeana Page. I am currently enrolled at Liberty University pursuing a bachelor’s degree in General Psychology, specializing in Crisis Counseling and Criminal Psychology. I also hope to obtain an undergraduate certificate in Military Resilience. I have gotten through the wall of general education classes and have now officially started diving into the remaining three years' worth of nitty-gritty major foundational courses for my degree. There is still quite a way to go, but I am determined to finish this degree and hope to maintain my higher grades for the entirety of the program. With this degree and certificate, I hope that I can work with first responders’ mental health programs to help reduce PTSD and suicide rates among first responders. I may even go for a PhD later to better learn how to start my own program if I feel like the ones that currently exist are insufficient for the needs of first responders. I am currently working full-time as a firefighter-paramedic alongside my full-time school, and paying out of pocket for my classes to try and avoid student loans. This scholarship would help take the edge off of my upcoming semester costs, and could help cover the cost of textbooks or go straight towards my tuition. I am truly enjoying my classes, and feel like I could get much more out of school if I were not concerned about meeting the price of college as much, with a little extra help from this or other scholarships.

My knee broke in the second week of the class, which essentially held the key certification I needed to continue into my chosen career field. In the fall of 2023, I was accepted into my hometown’s fire department for the position of firefighter paramedic. I had just finished an academically grueling two-year associate’s program to obtain my state paramedic’s license, and was raring to go for my 400-hour firefighter school. However, I had been lax on my physical training leading up to the academy. I will be the first to admit that I’m not well off in the “buff muscles” department, but I had not been working on my functional strength in the months leading up to the academy, which I was aware would be extremely hard for me physically. Not out of laziness, but just out of neglect born from being “too busy” to start new habits that were not a part of my normal routine. Two weeks into the class, I broke my knee. After two weeks filled with a slough of doctor’s visits, x-rays, and an MRI, I was told that I had a stress fracture and would not need surgery, but would need to be on light duty and ultimately drop out of the academy. This crushed me, but looking back on it from the other side, it was the push I needed to finally grasp what all of this was really about. I affirmed my desire to be a firefighter and began putting forth effort to get where I needed to be physically to be able to do the job. After I was released from light duty and during the hiatus of administrative duty while I waited for the next academy in the spring of 2024, I started researching workouts I could do at home since I didn’t have the money to buy a gym membership. I researched more about what workouts I should do to optimize my female build, where my strength came from, and how to work around problems differently than my future male coworkers, and how to strengthen my weaker areas. By the time my second chance came around on the calendar, I was much more prepared and attacked the new class with the determination of someone who not only knew why they wanted to do this, but also what was at stake. The job I wanted was dangerous, and I had known that, but I realized more acutely that people can get hurt and even die on the fireground, especially if they are not physically prepared for the job. I wanted to do this job, and I knew now that I was prepared to do it, and I also knew that I did not want to be a liability due to my lack of physical preparedness. The knee incident was a rough patch in my life up to date, but it forced me to look into myself and make the decision to either roll over and quit or to use the grit I knew I had to push through and make myself better. I now appreciate all that my physical body does for me much more; I have better long-standing habits for both my mental and physical health, and I feel like that incident forced me to take responsibility for my passion and determination to get where I am today. Looking back from where I am in my full-time position as a firefighter paramedic, I can know that I earned my place among my coworkers, largely because I made what seemed like a little decision to become better, whatever it took.

As a firefighter, my personal experience with mental health takes both a personal and a larger-scope view that draws from my experiences with my own mental health and what I’ve seen in my chosen career field. I have been working as a full-time firefighter paramedic in my hometown fire department for over a year and have been working in a lesser capacity in the same field for about five years before that. My limited personal experience and what I have learned through observation and input from the more experienced firefighters that I work with on shift have pulled back a curtain, of sorts, on the mental health crisis that plagues first responders in our country. When I began my journey toward becoming a firefighter in the small city I grew up in, I just knew that I had a love and passion for the job. Along the way, I went to a local community college. I graduated summa cum laude with an Associate's degree in Paramedicine, and I passed the state test to obtain a Paramedic license. While in school, my mental health took quite a few hits and drove me to write my final research paper of the year on the mental health crisis that first responders are facing right now. While at first, my choice of topic was admittedly more of an outlet for me to work through this last major project with something I could scrape together, throughout my research, I began to become invested. Evidence shows that first responders are at an extremely elevated risk of not just mental health problems, such as depression or anxiety, but increased risk of PTSD and suicide. While the nature of first response is dangerous and exposes its workers to many traumatic scenarios, as I was working on this paper and reading more heartbreaking statistics, I started thinking that what we are doing now to help negate the problem of first responder suicide wasn't working. And with that, I began thinking about how I would change it. I have posed a question to myself throughout recent years of, "What if I were Queen of the World?" to help me think through hypotheticals of how I would approach problems with a temporary disregard for resources, technicalities, etc. When I use this approach to flesh out a goal or solution to work towards, the resources and technicalities get added back in to think through how to get from where we are to where I want to be. I did the same pondering on this problem very specifically over the few months that I was researching my final project for paramedic school. How could we better prepare our first responders to deal with the traumatic experiences that they were undoubtedly going to face? How could we somehow create a group of people that could not only see the worst that the world and people have to offer up and still come out of it on the other side without losing themselves in the midst of it? Should we focus more on preventative mental health care or post-incident? I pondered this quite heavily throughout those few months, which were, coincidentally, the darkest months of my own mental health struggles. This timing made it both more personal and more vexing to research, since I felt both that it helped me by making me see that something was being done; someone was looking at it, even if that someone was myself. But it also made it seem more like a Sisyphean task since I was researching something in hopes to help others in the exact area that I felt so helpless to help myself. I eventually dragged myself through to the end of paramedic school and launched myself into a gap year from academia, using the free time I suddenly found myself with to begin my work as a full-time firefighter. However, it eventually became time to ponder something else: further education. Did I want to pursue an undergraduate degree? What would I want to get the degree in? I considered different factors and decided that, whatever I went back to school for, it would have to be in a field that I felt passionate about to help negate some of the impact on my mental health that I foresaw happening. Psychology planted itself quite firmly at the top of my list of possible fields that I would enjoy, and I figured that I could both pursue a degree that I will endlessly enjoy, as well as have an impact on these people that I consider my brothers and sisters in my work as a first responder. Thus, I have begun my undergraduate degree in general psychology with a specializations in crisis counseling at Liberty University in order to use that specialization to start researching and creating programs for first responders to help with the mental health crisis.

My name is Jeana Page, and I have been working as a Firefighter-Paramedic at the fire department in my hometown for a little over a year now. While deciding what to pursue for a bachelor's degree, I noticed the way society as a whole and those in the first response approach mental health among first responders and healthcare workers. It breaks my heart that people in the same profession that I am starting in are being left to dry when it comes to mental health problems that are being accepted more and more as an occupational hazard of the job. Police, firefighters, emergency medical service workers, and healthcare workers see and deal with horrible situations as part of the job, which is unavoidable for the line of work, but are not necessarily given proper resources to deal with the mental health problems that happen after those situations. I think the actions we are taking are not proportionate to the magnitude of first responders who commit suicide or struggle with mental health issues, so I decided I wanted to go to school to learn how to become a leader in that field. I want to find better ways to deal with mental health in first responders and more efficient approaches to both pre-incident and post-incident debriefing and mental health care. The job is dangerous, yes, and that is something that will not ever be truly negated. New improvements in equipment can make you safer in a burning house, but the number of deaths seems to stay the same in line-of-duty deaths from people who commit suicide after the fact. The physical dangers of the job are being negated and improved, and while first response will never be a safe job, we constantly make progress. However, I do not believe the same can be said of the mental dangers of the job. Death, diseases, and debilitating injuries are all things that are guaranteed to be seen by every first responder and healthcare worker, and there are proven side effects that result from that type of repeated exposure to mental trauma. We have all the facts in front of us, and all of these improvements and advances in technology, yet the number of suicides in first responders and healthcare workers continues to remain the same, or sadly, rise. This is an epidemic and requires the same amount of effort to solve it that a physical epidemic would warrant. First responder and healthcare worker mental health and suicide should be attacked with the same amount of righteous fury and passion that a physical epidemic would result in if you told someone the same number of people dying from suicide as from a physical illness. This is where I have found my passion and my niche of a social issue that I plan on attacking with that passion that I have mentioned. I do not think that by myself I will solve this social issue, but I intend to partner with others who have gone before and are doing the same thing and make a dent in the work towards a solution. The job is dangerous enough without intentionally or unintentionally turning a blind eye to the elephant of a problem that is taking up space in the room of first response.

My personal experience with mental health has drawn on many sources, both intrinsic--my mental health struggles and journey--and extrinsic, based on inputs from both my close friends who have their struggles with mental health as well as the larger scale of being faced with a mental health crisis in my field as a first responder. When I began my journey toward becoming a firefighter in the small city I grew up in, I just knew that I had a love and passion for the job. Along the way, I went to a local community college and graduated summa cum laude with an Associate's in Paramedicine, as well as passing the state test to have a Paramedic license. While in school, my mental health took quite a few hits and drove me to write my final research paper of the year on the mental health crisis that first responders are facing right now. While at first, my choice of topic was more of an outlet for me to work through this last major project with something I could scrape together, throughout my research I began to become invested. Evidence shows that first responders are at an extremely elevated risk of not just mental health problems, but increased risk of suicide and PTSD. This is to be somewhat expected from the very nature of the job, but as I was working on this paper and reading more heartbreaking statistics, I started thinking about how it could be helped further than what we are doing now. How could we better prepare our first responders to deal with the traumatic experiences that they were undoubtedly going to face? How could we somehow create a group of people that could not only see the worst that the world and people have to offer up and still come out of it on the other side without losing themselves in the midst of it? Should we focus more on preventative mental health care or post-incident? I pondered this for quite a few months until it came time for me to start looking at what degree I would want to get as part of my ongoing education. I have always had a fascination with the field of psychology, and I finally had a "eureka!" moment when I decided to go and pursue a degree in psychology so that I could be able to start researching and creating programs for first responders to help with the mental health crisis. I could both pursue a degree that I will endlessly enjoy, as well as have an impact on these people that I consider my brothers and sisters in my work as a first responder.

My name is Jeana Page, and I want to start working my way to a doctorate in Psychology, specifically Behavioral Health Leadership. That goal is a long way off, but I must start somewhere, don't I? I currently work as a firefighter paramedic in the small city in Tennessee where I grew up. I have been working towards this position for five years this past fall, and have loved every bit of the way. I graduated summa cum laude with an Associate's Degree in Paramedicine this past summer, then right after launched into my semester of firefighter training. Psychology seems like a jump from first response and healthcare, but in more recent years I have been made more and more aware of the fact that, often, the mental health of first responders is neglected or not addressed properly. While brainstorming what field of study I wanted to get my Bachelor's in, I figured out a way to combine my lifelong fascination with the intimate workings of the human psyche and mental health concerns with my love of first response and my fellow first responders. The Bachelor's program I have been accepted into is a General Psychology degree with a specialization in Crisis Counseling, as well as a separate undergraduate certificate called Military Resilience, which is the study of how to counsel military members and their families on what to expect before they get into the military; focusing on more preventative mental health care rather than trying to repair the astronomic damages left on the underprepared mind. I plan to work with the experience I will gain from this degree to develop my own program to assist first responders with their mental health care, focusing on mental fitness and preventative care as well as post-incident care. My love of the field of study combined with my passion to help my fellow first responders with their mental health and hopefully lower the staggering suicide rates that exist in my field right now. After I obtain my Bachelor's that I mentioned above, I want to go to the same school and get a Master's in Applied Psychology, followed by a Doctoral Program in Psychology with a specialization in Behavioral Health Leadership, which is the practice of leading a program in a more corporate setting that is geared towards the care of the employee of that establishment's mental health. I hope to change the outlook on mental health care and suicide prevention among first responders not only in my area but possibly on a state or national scale.

When I imagine the "ideal bookshelf", the titles appear from a wide range of input sources. Ranging from classics that my father has recommended to me, to more recent suggestions that have joined the ranks of the shelf through recommendations made by the #BookTok community. Classic recommendations include Frankenstein, Dracula, The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and Lord of the Rings. #BookTok recommendations include "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller, "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo, "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens, and "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas; as well as other titles that have piqued my interests but I have not read yet, such as "Circe" also by Madeline Miller, "Charlotte Iles is Not a Detective" by Katie Siegel, and "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo" by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I initially joined the #BookTok community when I started getting more and more book recommendation videos on TikTok. As I continued to interact with them, TikTok continued feeding me more. My first read based on the recommendations I received was "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller. I was immediately sucked in by the characterizations of the characters and the way it was written. I have always adored historical rewrites, and this one absolutely delivered. Not only was it a retelling of the Trojan War, but the way it was staged from the perspectives of Patroclus and Achilles pulled me in, and I barely set it down during the read. Overall, it affected the #BookTok community with its beautiful prose and extensive representation throughout the already intriguing story. My journey through my #BookTok suggestions was quickly followed by "Six of Crows" by Leigh Bardugo. This one was my favorite out of my reads so far, due to the adventurous, fast-paced nature of the fantasy heist plot, as well as its incredibly diverse cast of characters. It's no wonder this book has gained immense popularity on BookTok, its adventure setting and morally gray protagonists speaking nearly for themselves. I would and have recommended this title to reader friends of mine who are looking for a new fantasy book to work through. As my journey on BookTok continued, I found myself drawn to titles like "Where the Crawdads Sing" by Delia Owens and "The Hate U Give" by Angie Thomas, each offering insights into the human experience while igniting important conversations on social justice and representation. These books seemed to encapsulate the importance the written word has in communicating the need for change and raising complicated issues for discussion. By my somewhat accidental joining of the BookTok community, I not only discovered a plethora of wonderful stories but also found a sense of belonging among fellow book lovers. I am so grateful for the opportunity to explore new titles recommended by other book lovers who share my interests, as well as engage in meaningful discussions of the points these titles raise.